BAY-9835: Discovery of the First Orally Bioavailable ADAMTS7 Inhibitor.

The matrix metalloprotease ADAMTS7 has been identified by multiple genome-wide association studies as being involved in the development of coronary artery disease. Subsequent research revealed the proteolytic function of the enzyme to be relevant for atherogenesis and restenosis after vessel injury. Based on a publicly known dual ADAMTS4/ADAMTS5 inhibitor, we have in silico designed an ADAMTS7 inhibitor of the catalytic domain, which served as a starting point for an optimization campaign. Initially our inhibitors suffered from low selectivity vs MMP12. An X-ray cocrystal structure inspired us to exploit amino acid differences in the binding site of MMP12 and ADAMTS7 to improve selectivity. Further optimization composed of employing 5-membered heteroaromatic groups as hydantoin substituents to become more potent on ADAMTS7. Finally, fine-tuning of DMPK properties yielded BAY-9835, the first orally bioavailable ADAMTS7 inhibitor. Further optimization to improve selectivity vs ADAMTS12 seems possible, and a respective starting point could be identified.

KRAS and aneusomy of chromosomes 4, 10 and 12 in colorectal carcinomas.

AIMS: KRAS mutation status has predictive significance in EGFR-antibody treatment of colorectal adenocarcinoma. The aim of the study was the evaluation of KRAS mutation status in correlation to KRAS copy numbers and ploidy status. METHODS: Colorectal adenocarcinomas (n=52) were assembled into a TMA and analyzed by FISH. Probes for centromeres 4 and 10 were applied as surrogate markers for the ploidy status. In addition, a dual color FISH probe set for the centromere of chromosome 12 and the KRAS gene was applied to the TMA to analyze numerical alterations and KRAS gene copy numbers. Further we analyzed DNA sequence profiles of KRAS codons 12 and 13 to assess the allele status of the mutation within the tumor samples. RESULTS: KRAS mutation was confirmed in 24 cases, while 28 cases showed a wild-type KRAS status. The majority of cases showed diploid FISH signals for chromosomes 4 and 10. Near triploid FISH signals were observed in only 2 cases, 12 cases were hypodiploid, and 8 cases were hyperdiploid. In 6 cases, trisomy 12 could be ascertained. In total, aneuploidy could be detected in 28 cases, including cases with trisomy 12 and hyposomy 10. Tumors with aneuploid chromosomal content had a worse prognosis compared to euploid tumors, however, without reaching statistical significance (p=0.231). Hypodiploid carcinomas carried the worst prognosis. Specifically, monosomy 10 was significantly associated with reduced survival (p=0.039). Increased FISH signals of KRAS did not correlate significantly with relapse (p=0.916). CONCLUSIONS: FISH analysis can be used as a surrogate marker for the ploidy status. Loss of chromosome 10 may serve as a potential adverse prognostic marker being indicative for tumor progression.

Substantial improvements in large-scale redocking and screening using the novel HYDE scoring function.

The HYDE scoring function consistently describes hydrogen bonding, the hydrophobic effect and desolvation. It relies on HYdration and DEsolvation terms which are calibrated using octanol/water partition coefficients of small molecules. We do not use affinity data for calibration, therefore HYDE is generally applicable to all protein targets. HYDE reflects the Gibbs free energy of binding while only considering the essential interactions of protein-ligand complexes. The greatest benefit of HYDE is that it yields a very intuitive atom-based score, which can be mapped onto the ligand and protein atoms. This allows the direct visualization of the score and consequently facilitates analysis of protein-ligand complexes during the lead optimization process. In this study, we validated our new scoring function by applying it in large-scale docking experiments. We could successfully predict the correct binding mode in 93% of complexes in redocking calculations on the Astex diverse set, while our performance in virtual screening experiments using the DUD dataset showed significant enrichment values with a mean AUC of 0.77 across all protein targets with little or no structural defects. As part of these studies, we also carried out a very detailed analysis of the data that revealed interesting pitfalls, which we highlight here and which should be addressed in future benchmark datasets.