Design and Structure-Activity Relationship of a Potent Furin Inhibitor Derived from Influenza Hemagglutinin.

Furin plays an important role in various pathological states, especially in bacterial and viral infections. A detailed understanding of the structural requirements for inhibitors targeting this enzyme is crucial to develop new therapeutic strategies in infectious diseases, including an urgent unmet need for SARS-CoV-2 infection. Previously, we have identified a potent furin inhibitor, peptide Ac-RARRRKKRT-NH 2 (CF1), based on the highly pathogenic avian influenza hemagglutinin. The goal of this study was to determine how its N-terminal part (the P8-P5 positions) affects its activity profile. To do so, the positional-scanning libraries of individual peptides modified at the selected positions with natural amino acids were generated. Subsequently, the best substitutions were combined together and/or replaced by unnatural residues to expand our investigations. The results reveal that the affinity of CF1 can be improved (2-2.5-fold) by substituting its P5 position with the small hydrophobic residues (Ile or Val) or a basic Lys.

Macrocyclization of a potent PACE4 inhibitor: Benefits and limitations.

PACE4, one of the seven members of the proprotein convertase family, plays an important role in the progression of prostate cancer. Therefore, its inhibition has become an attractive target to develop new therapies against this disease. Recently, we have developed a highly potent and selective PACE4 inhibitor, known as the multi-Leu peptide with the following sequence Ac-LLLLRVKR-NH2. Herein, with the aim of improving the stability profile of this inhibitor for potential in vivo application, we investigated the impact of different cyclization strategies. The inhibitory activity of new peptides was tested and compared to their linear counterparts. The potent analogues were further selected for stability evaluation. Our results showed that the cyclization involving a C-terminal carboxylic acid (head-to-tail or side chain-to-tail) led to compounds with significantly diminished inhibitory potency towards PACE4, indicating that an appropriate balance between rigidity and flexibility of the structure is necessary to allow the optimal binding with the enzyme. On the other hand, the modification within a multi-Leu core in combination with the incorporation of a C-terminal 4-amidinobenzylamide (Amba) residue yielded potent cyclic analogues. The best compound derived from this group, (&)[Mpa]LLLC(&)RVK[Amba] (where & indicates cyclization, Mpa - 3-mercaptopropionic acid), exhibited promising overall profile comprising of potent inhibitory effect against PACE4 and prostate cancer cell lines as well as improved stability. We believe that this cyclic framework could be further used to design even more potent and stable PACE4 inhibitors.

Simultaneous determination of scopolamine, hyoscyamine and anisodamine in in vitro growth media of selected Solanaceae hairy roots by CE method.

An electrophoretic method for fast separation of three tropane alkaloids (hyoscyamine, anisodamine and scopolamine) was presented. The substances were complete resolved in less than one minute due to utilization of relatively short capillary (20.2cm effective length) and high voltage (25kV). Detector probing frequency was found among the parameters that significantly affected the detection sensitivity. The performed experiments showed insufficient available probing frequency of used commercial spectrophotometric detector according to capillary electrophoresis (CE) separation potential. Under the optimized conditions the background electrolyte (BGE) was composed of 20mM Tris, 6mM HCl and 20mM NaCl (pH 8.50). All analyses were carried out in fused silica capillaries of 50µm (inner diameter) and 31.2cm (total capillary length). Samples were injected hydrodynamically (5s; 3.45kPa) without any sample preparation step and separation was performed at 25kV. The elaborated method was applied in plant cultures growth media analysis after incubation with hairy roots of selected Solanaceae species. The performed experiments proved the usefulness of CE in quality control of biotechnological processes.