High-content phenotypic screening and triaging strategy to identify small molecules driving oligodendrocyte progenitor cell differentiation.

Multiple Sclerosis is a demyelinating disease of the CNS and the primary cause of neurological disability in young adults. Loss of myelinating oligodendrocytes leads to neuronal dysfunction and death and is an important contributing factor to this disease. Endogenous oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs), which on differentiation are responsible for replacing myelin, are present in the adult CNS. As such, therapeutic agents that can stimulate OPCs to differentiate and remyelinate demyelinated axons under pathologic conditions may improve neuronal function and clinical outcome. We describe the details of an automated, cell-based, morphometric-based, high-content screen that is used to identify small molecules eliciting the differentiation of OPCs after 3 days. Primary screening was performed using rat CG-4 cells maintained in culture conditions that normally support a progenitor cell-like state. From a library of 73,000 diverse small molecules within the Sanofi collection, 342 compounds were identified that increased OPC morphological complexity as an indicator of oligodendrocyte maturation. Subsequent to the primary high-content screen, a suite of cellular assays was established that identified 22 nontoxic compounds that selectively stimulated primary rat OPCs but not C2C12 muscle cell differentiation. This rigorous triaging yielded several chemical series for further expansion and bio- or cheminformatics studies, and their compelling biological activity merits further investigation.

Compound screening platform using human induced pluripotent stem cells to identify small molecules that promote chondrogenesis.

Articular cartilage, which is mainly composed of collagen II, enables smooth skeletal movement. Degeneration of collagen II can be caused by various events, such as injury, but degeneration especially increases over the course of normal aging. Unfortunately, the body does not fully repair itself from this type of degeneration, resulting in impaired movement. Microfracture, an articular cartilage repair surgical technique, has been commonly used in the clinic to induce the repair of tissue at damage sites. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) have also been used as cell therapy to repair degenerated cartilage. However, the therapeutic outcomes of all these techniques vary in different patients depending on their age, health, lesion size and the extent of damage to the cartilage. The repairing tissues either form fibrocartilage or go into a hypertrophic stage, both of which do not reproduce the equivalent functionality of endogenous hyaline cartilage. One of the reasons for this is inefficient chondrogenesis by endogenous and exogenous MSC. Drugs that promote chondrogenesis could be used to induce self-repair of damaged cartilage as a non-invasive approach alone, or combined with other techniques to greatly assist the therapeutic outcomes. The recent development of human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSCs), which are able to self-renew and differentiate into multiple cell types, provides a potentially valuable cell resource for drug screening in a "more relevant" cell type. Here we report a screening platform using human iPSCs in a multi-well plate format to identify compounds that could promote chondrogenesis.

X-ray crystallographic structure-based design of selective thienopyrazole inhibitors for interleukin-2-inducible tyrosine kinase.

Beginning with a screening hit, unique thienopyrazole-indole inhibitors of Itk (interleukin-2-inducible tyrosine kinase) were designed, synthesized, and crystallized in the target kinase. Although initial compounds were highly active in Itk, they were not selective. Increasing the steric bulk around a tertiary alcohol at the 5-indole position dramatically improved selectivity toward Lyk and Syk, but not Txk. Substitutions at the 3- and 4-indole positions gave less active compounds that remained poorly selective. A difluoromethyl substitution at the 5-position of the thienopyrazole led to a highly potent and selective compound. Phenyl at this position reduced activity and selectivity while pushing the side-chains of Lys-391 and Asp-500 away from the binding pocket. Novel and selective thienopyrazole inhibitors of Itk were designed as a result of combining structure-based design and medicinal chemistry.

Discovery of novel inhibitors for DHODH via virtual screening and X-ray crystallographic structures.

Amino-benzoic acid derivatives 1-4 were found to be inhibitors for DHODH by virtual screening, biochemical, and X-ray crystallographic studies. X-ray structures showed that 1 and 2 bind to DHODH as predicted by virtual screening, but 3 and 4 were found to be structurally different from the corresponding compounds initially identified by virtual screening.

Preclinical pharmacology of lumiracoxib: a novel selective inhibitor of cyclooxygenase-2.

1. This manuscript presents the preclinical profile of lumiracoxib, a novel cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) selective inhibitor. 2. Lumiracoxib inhibited purified COX-1 and COX-2 with K(i) values of 3 and 0.06 microM, respectively. In cellular assays, lumiracoxib had an IC(50) of 0.14 microM in COX-2-expressing dermal fibroblasts, but caused no inhibition of COX-1 at concentrations up to 30 microM (HEK 293 cells transfected with human COX-1). 3. In a human whole blood assay, IC(50) values for lumiracoxib were 0.13 microM for COX-2 and 67 microM for COX-1 (COX-1/COX-2 selectivity ratio 515). 4. Lumiracoxib was rapidly absorbed following oral administration in rats with peak plasma levels being reached between 0.5 and 1 h. 5. Ex vivo, lumiracoxib inhibited COX-1-derived thromboxane B(2) (TxB(2)) generation with an ID(50) of 33 mg kg(-1), whereas COX-2-derived production of prostaglandin E(2) (PGE(2)) in the lipopolysaccharide-stimulated rat air pouch was inhibited with an ID(50) value of 0.24 mg kg(-1). 6. Efficacy of lumiracoxib in rat models of hyperalgesia, oedema, pyresis and arthritis was dose-dependent and similar to diclofenac. However, consistent with its low COX-1 inhibitory activity, lumiracoxib at a dose of 100 mg kg(-1) orally caused no ulcers and was significantly less ulcerogenic than diclofenac (P<0.05). 7. Lumiracoxib is a highly selective COX-2 inhibitor with anti-inflammatory, analgesic and antipyretic activities comparable with diclofenac, the reference NSAID, but with much improved gastrointestinal safety.

Development of a high-throughput screening assay for inhibitors of aggrecan cleavage using luminescent oxygen channeling (AlphaScreen ).

Aggrecan is one of the most important structural components of joint cartilage, and members of the metalloprotease (MMP) and ADAM (a disintegrin and metalloproteinase) protease families have been shown to degrade aggrecan in vivo. A robust assay for aggrecan-degrading activity suitable for high-throughput screening (HTS) was set up and measured using AlphaScreen. In this technology, beads brought into proximity through cross-linking and stimulated with laser light generate a signal through luminescent oxygen tunneling, the outcome of which is a time-resolved fluorescent signal. Specific antibodies to the carbohydrate side chains of aggrecan were harnessed to create a scaffold whereby aggrecan could form a cross-link between donor and acceptor AlphaScreen detector beads. Digested aggrecan, which failed to form a cross-link, generated no signal, so that inhibitors of the digestion could be detected as a restoration of signal. The development of this assay and its validation for HTS are described in this report.

Development of an assay suitable for high-throughput screening to measure matrix metalloprotease activity.

MMPs, part of a family of enzymes with >35 known members, play an important role in tissue remodeling and repair, in the biology of neoplasia, and during development. Hydroxamic and carboxylic acid inhibitors of these proteases have long been available, but their specificities are poor and there still exists a desire to find novel chemical structures, which could be modified to optimize specificity and biocompatibility. Established methods for measuring MMP activity are based on the cleavage of MCA-PLGL-A2pr(DNP)-AR, which provides a prompt fluorescent signal when cleaved; however, its absorption/emission properties (325/400 nm) are not best suited for HTS assays. We describe an HTS-compatible method using the peptide substrate PLGLAARK, labeled at N- and C-termini with CyDye fluors Cy3 and Cy5Q, respectively, which is cleavable by MMP-1, -2, -3, -7, -9, and -13. HTS assays for MMP-13 and MMP-9 inhibitors were set up in approximately 20 microl in 384-well plates as a prompt fluorescence readout (excitation/emission = 540/570 nm) using the LEADseeker homogenous imaging system. These assays yielded IC(50) values comparable to standard methods, but with a faster, very sensitive, and normalized readout, thus conserving compound, enzyme (approximately 1.5 ng/well), and time (20 s read/plate). Data quality (Z' approximately 0.9) was such that hit-picking to -25% change in primary screening could be performed with confidence, and the subsequent rate of confirmation and validation in IC(50) determinations of the picked compounds was >60%. Parallel screening of related proteases also permitted immediate specificity comparisons, including evaluation of inactive or weakly active compounds.