Rationally designed foldameric adjuvants enhance antibiotic efficacy via promoting membrane hyperpolarization.

The negative membrane potential of bacterial cells influences crucial cellular processes. Inspired by the molecular scaffold of the antimicrobial peptide PGLa, we have developed antimicrobial foldamers with a computer-guided design strategy. The novel PGLa analogues induce sustained membrane hyperpolarization. When co-administered as an adjuvant, the resulting compounds - PGLb1 and PGLb2 - have substantially reduced the level of antibiotic resistance of multi-drug resistant Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Shigella flexneri clinical isolates. The observed antibiotic potentiation was mediated by hyperpolarization of the bacterial membrane caused by the alteration of cellular ion transport. Specifically, PGLb1 and PGLb2 are selective ionophores that enhance the Goldman-Hodgkin-Katz potential across the bacterial membrane. These findings indicate that manipulating bacterial membrane electrophysiology could be a valuable tool to overcome antimicrobial resistance.

Pegylation and formulation strategy of Anti-Microbial Peptide (AMP) according to the quality by design approach.

Antimicrobial resistance is one of the main global threats according to the World Health Organization's (WHO) report (World Health Organization 2014), therefore there is a need for the development of other agents, such as antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). Although AMPs are considered as major candidates for next-generation antibiotics, several challenges including low bioavailability, high manufacturing cost and toxicity are still to be solved for their practical use in therapeutic applications. Novel chemical modification approaches as well as strategies for their delivery offer several opportunities to overcome these barriers and develop more stable and cost-effective synthetic peptides with efficient delivery to the target site. The integration of the Quality by Design (QbD) approach in the early pharmaceutical developments supports researchers in optimizing the targeted product by a risk based manner. Peptide modifications and formulation of peptide delivery systems are challenging tasks and hide several risks. Understanding and evaluating the cause - effect relations within the initial Risk Assessment (RA) step in case of all attributes give the basis for the experimental design as the next step, and aids the formulation development in order to get the final product in the targeted quality range. This study presents a Quality by Design based antimicrobial peptide modification and formulation design. Analyses the potential risks in the AMP PEGylation process through the example of PGLa. The QbD based initial RA screened and evaluated the risk factors in this AMP modification procedure. The critical quality and process related factors were defined and their ranking was performed due to their estimated critical effect on the PEGylated AMP. This pre-formulation design study highlights the critical risk factors as decision points for the further steps.

Structural Optimization of Foldamer-Dendrimer Conjugates as Multivalent Agents against the Toxic Effects of Amyloid Beta Oligomers.

Alzheimer's disease is one of the most common chronic neurodegenerative disorders. Despite several in vivo and clinical studies, the cause of the disease is poorly understood. Currently, amyloid ß (Aß) peptide and its tendency to assemble into soluble oligomers are known as a main pathogenic event leading to the interruption of synapses and brain degeneration. Targeting neurotoxic Aß oligomers can help recognize the disease at an early stage or it can be a potential therapeutic approach. Unnatural ß-peptidic foldamers are successfully used against many different protein targets due to their favorable structural and pharmacokinetic properties compared to small molecule or protein-like drug candidates. We have previously reported a tetravalent foldamer-dendrimer conjugate which can selectively bind Aß oligomers. Taking advantage of multivalency and foldamers, we synthesized different multivalent foldamer-based conjugates to optimize the geometry of the ligand. Isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) was used to measure binding affinity to Aß, thereafter 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) based tissue viability assay and impedance-based viability assay on SH-SY5Y cells were applied to monitor Aß toxicity and protective effects of the compounds. Important factors for high binding affinity were determined and a good correlation was found between influencing the valence and the capability of the conjugates for Aß binding.

Peripheral cyclic ß-amino acids balance the stability and edge-protection of ß-sandwiches.

Engineering water-soluble stand-alone ß-sandwich mimetics is a current challenge because of the difficulties associated with tailoring long-range interactions. In this work, single cis-(1R,2S)-2-aminocyclohexanecarboxylic acid mutations were introduced into the edge strands of the eight-stranded ß-sandwich mimetic structures from the betabellin family. Temperature-dependent NMR and CD measurements, together with thermodynamic analyses, demonstrated that the modified peripheral strands exhibited an irregular and partially disordered structure but were able to exert sufficient shielding on the hydrophobic core to retain the predominantly ß-sandwich structure. Although the frustrated interactions decreased the free energy of unfolding, the temperature of the maximum stabilities increased to or remained at physiologically relevant temperatures. We found that the irregular peripheral strands were able to prevent edge-to-edge association and fibril formation in the aggregation-prone model. These findings establish a ß-sandwich stabilization and aggregation inhibition approach, which does not interfere with the pillars of the peptide bond or change the net charge of the peptide.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria show widespread collateral sensitivity to antimicrobial peptides.

Antimicrobial peptides are promising alternative antimicrobial agents. However, little is known about whether resistance to small-molecule antibiotics leads to cross-resistance (decreased sensitivity) or collateral sensitivity (increased sensitivity) to antimicrobial peptides. We systematically addressed this question by studying the susceptibilities of a comprehensive set of 60 antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli strains towards 24 antimicrobial peptides. Strikingly, antibiotic-resistant bacteria show a high frequency of collateral sensitivity to antimicrobial peptides, whereas cross-resistance is relatively rare. We identify clinically relevant multidrug-resistance mutations that increase bacterial sensitivity to antimicrobial peptides. Collateral sensitivity in multidrug-resistant bacteria arises partly through regulatory changes shaping the lipopolysaccharide composition of the bacterial outer membrane. These advances allow the identification of antimicrobial peptide-antibiotic combinations that enhance antibiotic activity against multidrug-resistant bacteria and slow down de novo evolution of resistance. In particular, when co-administered as an adjuvant, the antimicrobial peptide glycine-leucine-amide caused up to 30-fold decrease in the antibiotic resistance level of resistant bacteria. Our work provides guidelines for the development of efficient peptide-based therapies of antibiotic-resistant infections.

Multivalent foldamer-based affinity assay for selective recognition of Aß oligomers.

Mimicking the molecular recognition functionality of antibodies is a great challenge. Foldamers are attractive candidates because of their relatively small size and designable interaction surface. This paper describes a sandwich type enzyme-linked immunoassay with a tetravalent ß-peptide foldamer helix array as capture element and enzyme labeled tracer antibodies. The assay was found to be selective to ß-amyloid oligomeric species with surface features transiently present in ongoing aggregation. In optimized conditions, with special emphasis on the foldamer immobilization, a detection limit of 5 pM was achieved with a linear range of 10-500 pM. These results suggest that protein mimetic foldamers can be useful tools in biosensors and affinity assays.

Induced folding of protein-sized foldameric ß-sandwich models with core ß-amino acid residues.

The mimicry of protein-sized ß-sheet structures with unnatural peptidic sequences (foldamers) is a considerable challenge. In this work, the de novo designed betabellin-14 ß-sheet has been used as a template, and αâ†’ß residue mutations were carried out in the hydrophobic core (positions 12 and 19). ß-Residues with diverse structural properties were utilized: Homologous ß(3) -amino acids, (1R,2S)-2-aminocyclopentanecarboxylic acid (ACPC), (1R,2S)-2-aminocyclohexanecarboxylic acid (ACHC), (1R,2S)-2-aminocyclohex-3-enecarboxylic acid (ACEC), and (1S,2S,3R,5S)-2-amino-6,6-dimethylbicyclo[3.1.1]heptane-3-carboxylic acid (ABHC). Six α/ß-peptidic chains were constructed in both monomeric and disulfide-linked dimeric forms. Structural studies based on circular dichroism spectroscopy, the analysis of NMR chemical shifts, and molecular dynamics simulations revealed that dimerization induced ß-sheet formation in the 64-residue foldameric systems. Core replacement with (1R,2S)-ACHC was found to be unique among the ß-amino acid building blocks studied because it was simultaneously able to maintain the interstrand hydrogen-bonding network and to fit sterically into the hydrophobic interior of the ß-sandwich. The novel ß-sandwich model containing 25 % unnatural building blocks afforded protein-like thermal denaturation behavior.

Design of peptidic foldamer helices: a stereochemical patterning approach.

Assembly language: The programmed sequences of stereochemical building blocks lead to novel biomimetic helices. The rational design approach offers new possibilities for creating periodic secondary structures.