Identification of Tractable Drug-Like elF4AI Inhibitors with Potent Anti-Tumor Activity – Frost Institute for Data Science & Computing

Identification of Tractable Drug-Like elF4AI Inhibitors with Potent Anti-Tumor…

Clinical efficacy of targeted signaling inhibitors for hematologic malignancies is limited by outgrowth of subpopulations with alternative pathways independent of the drug target. The eIF4F complex responsible for translation initiation is a convergence point for cancer-promoting signaling pathways and its inhibition leads to decreased expression of key oncoproteins and apoptosis. Lymphomas and leukemias show particular dependence on constitutive eIF4F activation. Indeed, natural compounds targeting the eIF4F enzymatic component, eIF4A1, demonstrate activities in vitro and in vivo against lymphoma and leukemia model systems, among other tumor types. The natural compound silvestrol is a potent inhibitor of eIF4A1, results in cancer cell cytotoxicity, and has an established therapeutic window in vivo. Silvestrol shows potent antitumor activity against 924 pan-cancer tumor cell lines with 830/924 (90%) sensitive at IC50 <100nM with lymphoma and leukemia cell lines being particularly sensitive. Silvestrol and other natural compounds, however, lack core drug-like properties and synthetic tractability.

To discover new, specific and tractable inhibitors of eIF4A1 that are more drug-like, we have constructed several molecular models that we used to virtually screen more than 20 million compounds. eIF4A1 is the founding member of the DEAD-box RNA helicases, which include its paralogs eIF4A2 (91% amino-acid identity with eIF4A1) and eIF4A3 (60% identity). All DEAD-box helicases contain two RecA-like domains separated by a flexible linker. The cleft between these domains is lined with helicase motifs that mediate nucleotide binding and hydrolysis. In an absence of RNA or nucleotide, eIF4A proteins adopt diffuse open conformations; binding of RNA and ATP triggers the transition to a more stable closed state. Modeling small-molecule interactions in the nucleotide cleft of eIF4A1, therefore, assesses the ability of molecules to lock eIF4A1 in a conformation unable to cycle through ATPase and helicase activities.