A FRET-based assay for the discovery of West Nile Virus NS2B-NS3 protease inhibitors.

The West Nile Virus (WNV) has been a worldwide epidemic since the early 1990s. Currently there are no therapeutic treatments for WNV infections. One particular avenue of treatment is inhibition of the NS2B-NS3 protease, an enzyme that is crucial for WNV replication. In our effort to increase the number of NS2B-NS3 protease inhibitors, we report a novel FRET-based high throughput assay for the discovery of WNV NS2B-NS3 protease inhibitors. For this assay, a FRET-based peptide substrate was synthesized and kinetically characterized with the NS2B-NS3 protease. The new substrate exhibits a K(m) of 3.35 ± 0.31 µM, a k(cat) of 0.0717 ± 0.0016 s(-1) and a k(cat)/K(m) of 21,400 ± 2000 M(-1) s(-1).