The angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE)-related carboxypeptidase, ACE2, is a type I integral membrane protein of 805 amino acids that contains one HEXXH ؉ E zincbinding consensus sequence. ACE2 has been implicated in the regulation of heart function and also as a functional receptor for the coronavirus that causes the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). To gain further insights into this enzyme, the first crystal structures of the native and inhibitor-bound forms of the ACE2 extracellular domains were solved to 2.2-and 3.0-Å resolution, respectively. Comparison of these structures revealed a large inhibitor-dependent hinge-bending movement of one catalytic subdomain relative to the other (ϳ16°) that brings important residues into position for catalysis. The potent inhibitor MLN-4760 ((S,S)-2-{1-carboxy-2-[3-(3,5-dichlorobenzyl)-3H-imidazol4-yl]-ethylamino}-4-methylpentanoic acid) makes key binding interactions within the active site and offers insights regarding the action of residues involved in catalysis and substrate specificity. A few active site residue substitutions in ACE2 relative to ACE appear to eliminate the S 2 substrate-binding subsite and account for the observed reactivity change from the peptidyl dipeptidase activity of ACE to the carboxypeptidase activity of ACE2.The angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) 1 -related carboxypeptidase, ACE2, is a type I integral membrane protein of 805 amino acids that contains one HEXXH ϩ E zinc-binding consensus sequence (1, 2). The catalytic domain of ACE2 is 42% identical to that of its closest homolog, somatic angiotensinconverting enzyme (sACE; EC 3.4.15.1), a peptidyl dipeptidase that plays an important role in the renin angiotensin system for blood pressure homeostasis. The loss of ACE2 in knockout mice has no effect on blood pressure, but reveals ACE2 as an essential regulator of heart function (3). In a recent discovery, ACE2 was identified as a functional receptor for the coronavirus that is linked to the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) (4, 5).The physiological differences observed in the phenotypes of ACE (6, 7) and/or ACE2 (3) knockout mice presumably reflect the significant differences in substrate specificity and reactivity between these enzymes. Many substrates for ACE2 were identified by screening biologically active peptides (8). In all cases, only carboxypeptidase activity was found. Of the seven best in vitro peptide substrates identified (k cat /K m Ͼ 10 5 M Ϫ1 s Ϫ1 ), proline and leucine are the preferred P 1 residues, with a partiality for hydrophobic residues in the P 1 Ј position, although basic residues at P 1 Ј are also cleaved (peptide-binding subsites in proteins are as previously defined (9)). Some of the best in vitro peptide substrates are apelin-13, des-Arg 9 -bradykinin, angiotensin II, and dynorphin A-(1-13). The longest peptide substrate identified is a 36-residue peptide, apelin-36 (8). An examination of the ACE2 and ACE literature may be found in recently published reviews (10 -12).We report here the first crystal ...

More general and universally applicable drug discovery assay technologies are needed in order to keep pace with the recent advances in combinatorial chemistry and genomics-based target generation. Ligand-induced conformational stabilization of proteins is a well-understood phenomenon in which substrates, inhibitors, cofactors, and even other proteins provide enhanced stability to proteins on binding. This phenomenon is based on the energetic coupling of the ligand-binding and protein-melting reactions. In an attempt to harness these biophysical properties for drug discovery, fully automated instrumentation was designed and implemented to perform miniaturized fluorescence-based thermal shift assays in a microplate format for the high throughput screening of compound libraries. Validation of this process and instrumentation was achieved by investigating ligand binding to more than 100 protein targets. The general applicability of the thermal shift screening strategy was found to be an important advantage because it circumvents the need to design and retool new assays with each new therapeutic target. Moreover, the miniaturized thermal shift assay methodology does not require any prior knowledge of a therapeutic target's function, making it ideally suited for the quantitative high throughput drug screening and evaluation of targets derived from genomics.

No abstract

HDM2 binds to an alpha-helical transactivation domain of p53, inhibiting its tumor suppressive functions. A miniaturized thermal denaturation assay was used to screen chemical libraries, resulting in the discovery of a novel series of benzodiazepinedione antagonists of the HDM2-p53 interaction. The X-ray crystal structure of improved antagonists bound to HDM2 reveals their alpha-helix mimetic properties. These optimized molecules increase the transcription of p53 target genes and decrease proliferation of tumor cells expressing wild-type p53.

Fibroblast growth factors (FGF's) interact on cell surfaces with "low-affinity" heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPG) and "high-affinity" FGF receptors (FGFR) to initiate cell proliferation. Previous reports have implicated the binding of heparin, or heparan sulfate, to FGF as essential for FGF-mediated signal transduction and mitogenicity. However, the molecular recognition events which dictate the specificity of this interaction have remained elusive. Amino acid residues on the surface of basic FGF (bFGF) were targeted as potential heparin contacts on the basis of the position of sulfate anions in the X-ray crystal structure of bFGF and of a modeled pentasaccharide heparin-bFGF complex. Each identified amino acid was replaced individually with alanine by site-directed mutagenesis, and the resulting mutant proteins were characterized for differences in binding to a low molecular weight heparin (approximately 3000) by isothermal titrating calorimetry and also for differences in [NaCl] elution from a heparin-Sepharose affinity resin. The combination of site-directed mutagenesis and titrating calorimetry permitted an analysis of the energetic contributions of individual bFGF residues in the binding of heparin to bFGF. The key amino acids which comprise the heparin binding domain on bFGF constitute a discontinuous binding epitope and include K26, N27, R81, K119, R120, T121, Q123, K125, K129, Q134, and K135. Addition of the observed delta delta G degrees of binding for each single site mutant accounts for 8.56 kcal/mol (> 95%) of the free energy of binding. The delta delta G degrees values for N27A, R120A, K125A, and Q134A are all greater than 1 kcal/mol each, and these four amino acids together contribute 4.8 kcal/mol (56%) to the total binding free energy. Amino acid residues K119 through K135 reside in the C-terminal domain of bFGF and collectively contribute 6.6 kcal/mol (76%) of the binding free energy. Although 7 out of the 11 identified amino acids in the heparin binding domain are positively charged, a 7-fold increase in [NaCl] decreases the affinity of wild-type bFGF binding to heparin only 37-fold (Kd at 0.1 M NaCl = 470 nM vs Kd at 0.7 M NaCl = 17.2 microM). This indicates that pure electrostatic interactions contribute only 30% of the binding free energy as analyzed by polyelectrolyte theory and that more specific nonionic interactions, such as hydrogen bonding and van der Waals packing, contribute the majority of the free energy for this binding reaction.