Progress toward a novel pro‐drug approach for temporal manipulation of protein kinase A with a commercially available ruthenium catalyst (968.1)

Abstract

Transition metal catalysts have been demonstrated in principle for temporal and spatial control of reactions, but this technology has yet to be broadly applied as a tool for biological study and cellular manipulation. Here we demonstrate the use of a ruthenium complex catalyst as a novel approach for spatial and temporal release of a pro‐drug inside cells, namely the transition of caged H89 to active H89, a Protein Kinase A (PKA) inhibitor. We synthesized caged H89 by protecting H89 as an allyl carbamate. We designed the system to intracellularly generate an active H89 inhibitor from caged H89 following addition of the ruthenium metal catalyst with the goal of inhibiting the catalytic activity of PKA and therefore reducing the phosphorylation of perilipin 1. The ruthenium catalyst activity was monitored by assessing the phosphorylation of perilipin 1, which is phosphorylated by PKA on 6 serine residues and not phosphorylated by other kinases. Experiments were performed on cell lines expressing endogenous perlipin 1, differentiated 3T3L1 cells and Y1 adrenal cells. Our results show that in its active state, H89 inhibited phosphorylation activity of PKA on substrates such as perilipin whereas the caged form of H89 lacked inhibitory activity. Experiments are planned for use of the ruthenium catalyst after the H89 and caged H89 incubation steps to determine the ability of the catalyst to activate caged H89 intracellularly. Grant Funding Source: Supported by The Royal Society of Chemistry