Structure-Reactivity Studies of 2-Sulfonylpyrimidines Allow Selective Protein Arylation.

Protein arylation has attracted much attention for developing new classes of bioconjugates with improved properties. Here, we have evaluated 2-sulfonylpyrimidines as covalent warheads for the mild, chemoselective, and metal free cysteine S-arylation. 2-Sulfonylpyrimidines react rapidly with cysteine, resulting in stable S-heteroarylated adducts at neutral pH. Fine tuning the heterocyclic core and exocyclic leaving group allowed predictable SNAr reactivity in vitro, covering >9 orders of magnitude. Finally, we achieved fast chemo- and regiospecific arylation of a mutant p53 protein and confirmed arylation sites by protein X-ray crystallography. Hence, we report the first example of a protein site specifically S-arylated with iodo-aromatic motifs. Overall, this study provides the most comprehensive structure-reactivity relationship to date on heteroaryl sulfones and highlights 2-sulfonylpyrimidine as a synthetically tractable and protein compatible covalent motif for targeting reactive cysteines, expanding the arsenal of tunable warheads for modern covalent ligand discovery.

Tight-binding inhibition of jack bean α-mannosidase by glycoimidazole clusters.

The best multivalent effects observed in glycosidase inhibition have been achieved so far with jack bean α-mannosidase (JBα-man) using iminosugar clusters based on weakly binding mismatching active-site-directed inhibiting epitopes (inhitopes) in the d-gluco series. Here, we synthesize and evaluate as JBα-man inhibitors a series of mono- to 14-valent glycoimidazoles with inhitopes displaying inhibition values up to the range of hundreds of nMs to study the impact of inhitope affinity on the multivalent effect. The most potent inhibitor of the series, a 14-valent mannoimidazole derivative, inhibits JBα-man with a nanomolar Ki value (2 ± 0.5 nM) and binding enhancements observed are, at best, relatively small (up to 25-fold on a valency-corrected basis). The results of this study support the fact that JBα-man-inhitope affinity and the strength of the inhibitory multivalent effect evolve in the opposite direction. The major impact of the glycoimidazole-based inhitope is found on the binding scenario; most of the synthesized mannoimidazole clusters as well as a 14-valent glucoimidazole derivative prove to be tight binding inhibitors of JBα-man.