Morphine is an alkaloid from the opium poppy used to treat pain. The potentially lethal side effects of morphine and related opioids—which include fatal respiratory depression—are thought to be mediated by μ-opioid-receptor (μOR) signalling through the β-arrestin pathway or by actions at other receptors. Conversely, G-protein μOR signalling is thought to confer analgesia. Here we computationally dock over 3 million molecules against the μOR structure and identify new scaffolds unrelated to known opioids. Structure-based optimization yields PZM21—a potent Gi activator with exceptional selectivity for μOR and minimal β-arrestin-2 recruitment. Unlike morphine, PZM21 is more efficacious for the affective component of analgesia versus the reflexive component and is devoid of both respiratory depression and morphine-like reinforcing activity in mice at equi-analgesic doses. PZM21 thus serves as both a probe to disentangle μOR signalling and a therapeutic lead that is devoid of many of the side effects of current opioids.
The clinical efficacy and safety of a drug is determined by its activity profile across multiple proteins in the proteome. However, designing drugs with a specific multi-target profile is both complex and difficult. Therefore methods to rationally design drugs a priori against profiles of multiple proteins would have immense value in drug discovery. We describe a new approach for the automated design of ligands against profiles of multiple drug targets. The method is demonstrated by the evolution of an approved acetylcholinesterase inhibitor drug into brain penetrable ligands with either specific polypharmacology or exquisite selectivity profiles for G-protein coupled receptors. Overall, 800 ligand-target predictions of prospectively designed ligands were tested experimentally, of which 75% were confirmed correct. We also demonstrate target engagement in vivo. The approach can be a useful source of drug leads where multi-target profiles are required to achieve either selectivity over other drug targets or a desired polypharmacology.
G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are essential mediators of cellular signaling and important targets of drug action. Of the approximately 350 non-olfactory human GPCRs, more than 100 are still considered “orphans” as their endogenous ligand(s) remain unknown. Here, we describe a unique open-source resource that provides the capacity to interrogate the druggable human GPCR-ome via a G protein-independent β-arrestin recruitment assay. We validate this unique platform at more than 120 non-orphan human GPCR targets, demonstrate its utility for discovering new ligands for orphan human GPCRs, and describe a method (PRESTO-TANGO; Parallel Receptor-ome Expression and Screening via Transcriptional Output - TANGO) for the simultaneous and parallel interrogation of the entire human GPCR-ome.
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