Rationally Designed Protein-Based Inhibitor of α-Synuclein Fibrillization in Cells

J Med Chem. 2021 May 27;64(10):6827-6837. doi: 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.1c00086. Epub 2021 May 10.

Abstract

Misfolding of the neuronal protein α-synuclein (αSyn) into amyloid fibrils is involved in the development of Parkinson's disease (PD), and inhibition of this process is considered to be a promising therapeutic approach. In this work, we engineered protein inhibitors that bind to fibrils with higher affinity than the monomeric αSyn. They were developed based on the recent structural data of the αSyn fibrils and were shown to prevent fibril elongation upon binding to fibril ends. These inhibitors are highly selective to the misfolded αSyn, nontoxic, and active in cytosol in small concentrations. The best-performing inhibitor shows IC50 ∼10 nM in a cell-based assay, which corresponds to the ∼1:60 molar ratio to αSyn. It can suppress the formation of αSyn aggregates in cells that can be potentially used to slow down the spreading of the pathological aggregates from cell to cell during the course of the PD.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Amyloid / metabolism*
  • Cell Line, Tumor
  • Drug Design*
  • Fluorescent Dyes / chemistry
  • Humans
  • Kinetics
  • Microscopy, Fluorescence
  • Parkinson Disease / metabolism
  • Parkinson Disease / pathology
  • Peptides / chemistry*
  • Peptides / metabolism
  • Protein Aggregates
  • Protein Binding
  • alpha-Synuclein / antagonists & inhibitors*
  • alpha-Synuclein / genetics
  • alpha-Synuclein / metabolism

Substances

  • Amyloid
  • Fluorescent Dyes
  • Peptides
  • Protein Aggregates
  • alpha-Synuclein