Cancer treatment suffers from limitations that have a major impact on the patient's quality of life and survival. In case of chemotherapy, the systemic distribution of cytotoxic drugs reduces their efficacy and causes severe side effects due to non-selective toxicity. Photopharmacology allows a novel approach to address these problems, as it employs external, local activation of chemotherapeutic agents using light. We report here the development of photoswitchable Histone Deacetylase inhibitors as potential antitumor agents. Analogs of the clinically used chemotherapeutic agents Vorinostat, Panobinostat and Belinostat were designed with a photoswitchable azobenzene moiety incorporated into their structure. The most promising compound exhibits high inhibitory potency in the thermodynamically less stable cis form and a significantly lower activity for the trans form, both on HDACs activity and proliferation of HeLa cells. This approach offers a clear prospect towards local photo-activation of HDAC inhibition, to avoid severe side effects in chemotherapy.

Graphical abstract

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) constitutes a major health burden. Studying underlying molecular mechanisms could lead to new therapeutic targets. Macrophages are orchestrators of COPD, by releasing pro-inflammatory cytokines. This process relies on transcription factors such as NF-κB, among others. NF-κB is regulated by lysine acetylation; a post-translational modification installed by histone acetyltransferases and removed by histone deacetylases (HDACs). We hypothesized that small molecule HDAC inhibitors (HDACi) targeting class I HDACs members that can regulate NF-κB could attenuate inflammatory responses in COPD via modulation of the NF-κB signaling output. MS-275 is an isoform-selective inhibitor of HDAC1-3. In precision-cut lung slices and RAW264.7 macrophages, MS-275 upregulated the expression of both pro- and anti-inflammatory genes, implying mixed effects. Interestingly, anti-inflammatory IL10 expression was upregulated in these model systems. In the macrophages, this was associated with increased NF-κB activity, acetylation, nuclear translocation, and binding to the IL10 promoter. Importantly, in an in vivo model of cigarette smoke-exposed C57Bl/6 mice, MS-275 robustly attenuated inflammatory expression of KC and neutrophil influx in the lungs. This study highlights for the first time the potential of isoform-selective HDACi for the treatment of inflammatory lung diseases like COPD.

An increasing number of chemical reactions are being employed for bio-orthogonal ligation of detection labels to protein-bound functional groups. Several of these strategies, however, are limited in their application to pure proteins and are ineffective in complex biological samples such as cell lysates. Here we present the palladium-catalyzed oxidative Heck reaction as a new and robust bio-orthogonal strategy for linking functionalized arylboronic acids to protein-bound alkenes in high yields and with excellent chemoselectivity even in the presence of complex protein mixtures from living cells. Advantageously, this reaction proceeds under aerobic conditions, whereas most other metal-catalyzed reactions require inert atmosphere.

The detection of protein lysine acylations remains a challenge due to lack of specific antibodies for acylations with various chain lengths. This problem can be addressed by metabolic labeling techniques using carboxylates with reactive functionalities. Subsequent chemoselective reactions with a complementary moiety connected to a detection tag enable the visualization and quantification of the protein lysine acylome. In this study, we present EDTA-Pd(II) as a novel catalyst for the oxidative Heck reaction on protein-bound alkenes, which allows employment of fully aqueous reaction conditions. We used this reaction to monitor histone lysine acylation in vitro after metabolic incorporation of olefinic carboxylates as chemical reporters.