L-Proline is an amino acid that plays an important role in proteins uniquely contributing to protein folding, structure, and stability, and this amino acid serves as a sequence-recognition motif. Proline biosynthesis can occur via two pathways, one from glutamate and the other from arginine. In both pathways, the last step of biosynthesis, the conversion of Δ 1 -pyrroline-5-carboxylate (P5C) to Lproline, is catalyzed by Δ 1 -pyrroline-5-carboxylate reductase (P5CR) using NAD(P)H as a cofactor. We have determined the first crystal structure of P5CR from two human pathogens, Neisseria meningitides and Streptococcus pyogenes, at 2.0Å and 2.15Å resolution, respectively. The catalytic unit of P5CR is a dimer composed of two domains, but the biological unit seems to be speciesspecific. The N-terminal domain of P5CR is an α/β/α sandwich, a Rossmann fold. The C-terminal dimerization domain is rich in α-helices and shows domain swapping. Comparison of the native structure of P5CR to structures complexed with L-proline and NADP + in two quite different primary sequence backgrounds provides unique information about key functional features: the active site and the catalytic mechanism. The inhibitory L-proline has been observed in the crystal structure.

Recent studies have demonstrated that Glycogen Synthase Kinase 3β (GSK-3β) is overexpressed in human colon and pancreatic carcinomas contributing to cancer cell proliferation and survival. Here, we report the design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of benzofuran-3-yl-(indol-3-yl) maleimides, potent GSK-3β inhibitors. Some of these compounds show picomolar inhibitory activity toward GSK-3β and an enhanced selectivity against Cyclin-dependent Kinase 2 (CDK-2). Selected GSK-3β inhibitors were tested in the pancreatic cancer cell lines MiaPaCa-2, BXPC-3, and HupT3. We determined that some of these compounds, namely compounds 5, 6, 11, 20 and 26, demonstrate antiproliferative activity against some or all of the pancreatic cancer cells at low micromolar to nanomolar concentrations. We found that the treatment of pancreatic cancer cells with GSK-3β inhibitors 5 and 26 resulted in suppression of GSK-3β activity and a distinct decrease of the X-linked Inhibitor of Apoptosis (XIAP) expression leading to significant apoptosis. The present data suggest a possible role for GSK-3β inhibitors in cancer therapy, in addition to their more prominent applications in CNS disorders.

The design, synthesis, docking, and biological evaluation of novel potent HDAC3 and HDAC8 isoxazole- and pyrazole-based diazide probes suitable for Binding Ensemble Profiling with Photoaffinity Labeling (BEProFL) experiments in cells is described. Both the isoxazole- and pyrazole-based probes exhibit low nanomolar inhibitory activity against HDAC3 and HDAC8, respectively. The pyrazole-based probe 3f appears to be one of the most active HDAC8 inhibitors reported in the literature with an IC50 of 17 nM. Our docking studies suggest that unlike the isoxazole-based ligands the pyrazole-based ligands are flexible enough to occupy the second binding site of HDAC8. Probes/inhibitors 2b, 3a, 3c, and 3f exerted the anti-proliferative and neuroprotective activities at micromolar concentrations through inhibition of nuclear HDACs, indicating that they are cell permeable and the presence of an azide or a diazide group does not interfere with the neuroprotection properties, or enhance cellular cytotoxicity, or affect cell permeability.