Legal but lethal: functional protein aggregation at the verge of toxicity.

Many neurodegenerative disorders are linked to irreversible protein aggregation, a process that usually comes along with toxicity and serious cellular damage. However, it is emerging that protein aggregation can also serve for physiological purposes, as impressively shown for prions. While the aggregation of this protein family was initially considered exclusively toxic in mammalians organisms, it is now almost clear that many other proteins adopt prion-like attributes to rationally polymerize into higher order complexes with organized physiologic roles. This implies that cells can tolerate at least in some measure the accumulation of inherently dangerous protein aggregates for functional profit. This review summarizes currently known strategies that living organisms adopt to preserve beneficial aggregation, and to prevent the catastrophic accumulation of toxic aggregates that frequently accompany neurodegeneration.

A combinatorial approach to biophysically characterise chemokine-glycan binding affinities for drug development.

Chemokine binding to glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) is recognised to be an important step in inflammation and other pathological disorders like tumor growth and metastasis. Although different ways and strategies to interfere with these interactions are being pursued, no major breakthrough in the development of glycan-targeting drugs has been reported so far. We have engineered CXCL8 towards a dominant-negative form of this chemokine (dnCXCL8) which was shown to be highly active in various inflammatory animal models due to its inability to bind/activate the cognate CXCL8 GPC receptors on neutrophils in combination with its significantly increased GAG-binding affinity [1]. For the development of GAG-targeting chemokine-based biopharmaceuticals, we have established a repertoire of methods which allow the quantification of protein-GAG interactions. Isothermal fluorescence titration (IFT), surface plasmon resonance (SPR), isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC), and a novel ELISA-like competition assay (ELICO) have been used to determine Kd and IC50 values for CXCL8 and dnCXCL8 interacting with heparin and heparan sulfate (HS), the proto-typical members of the GAG family. Although the different methods gave different absolute affinities for the four protein-ligand pairs, the relative increase in GAG-binding affinity of dnCXCL8 compared to the wild type chemokine was found by all methods. In combination, these biophysical methods allow to discriminate between unspecific and specific protein-GAG interactions.

Designing CXCL8-based decoy proteins with strong anti-inflammatory activity in vivo.

IL (interleukin)-8 [CXCL8 (CXC chemokine ligand 8)] exerts its role in inflammation by triggering neutrophils via its specific GPCRs (G-protein-coupled receptors), CXCR1 (CXC chemokine receptor 1) and CXCR2, for which additional binding to endothelial HS-GAGs (heparan sulphate-glycosaminoglycans) is required. We present here a novel approach for blocking the CXCL8-related inflammatory cascade by generating dominant-negative CXCL8 mutants with improved GAG-binding affinity and knocked-out CXCR1/CXCR2 activity. These non-signalling CXCL8 decoy proteins are able to displace WT (wild-type) CXCL8 and to prevent CXCR1/CXCR2 signalling thereby interfering with the inflammatory response. We have designed 14 CXCL8 mutants that we subdivided into three classes according to number and site of mutations. The decoys were characterized by IFTs (isothermal fluorescence titrations) and SPR (surface plasmon resonance) to determine GAG affinity. Protein stability and structural changes were evaluated by far-UV CD spectroscopy and knocked-out GPCR response was shown by Boyden chamber and Ca2+ release assays. From these experiments, CXCL8(Δ6F17KF21KE70KN71K) emerged with the most promising in vitro characteristics. This mutant was therefore further investigated in a murine model of mBSA (methylated BSA)-induced arthritis in mice where it showed strong anti-inflammatory activity. Based on these results, we propose that dominant-negative CXCL8 decoy proteins are a promising class of novel biopharmaceuticals with high therapeutic potential in inflammatory diseases.

Structure-based design of decoy chemokines as a way to explore the pharmacological potential of glycosaminoglycans.

Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) are a class of highly negatively charged, unbranched, O-linked polysaccharides that are involved in many diseases. Their role as a protein-binding matrix on cell surfaces has long been recognized, but therapeutic approaches to interfere with protein-GAG interactions have been limited due to the complex chemistry of GAGs, on one hand, and due to the lack of specific antibodies against GAGs, on the other hand. We have developed a protein engineering platform (the so-called CellJammer(®) technology), which enables us to introduce higher GAG-binding affinity into wild-type GAG-binding proteins and to combine this with impaired biological, receptor-binding function. Chemokines are among the prototypic GAG-binding proteins and here we present selected results of our CellJammer technology applied to several of these proinflammatory proteins. An overview is given of our lead decoy protein, PA401, which is a CXCL8-based mutant protein with increased GAG-binding affinity and decreased CXCR1/2 binding and activation. Major results from our CCL2 and CCL5 programmes are also summarized and the potential for clinical application of these decoy proteins is presented.