Inhibition of Aβ Amyloid Growth and Toxicity by Silybins: The Crucial Role of Stereochemistry
作者:Michele. F. M. Sciacca、Valeria Romanucci、Armando Zarrelli、Irene Monaco、Fabio Lolicato、Natalia Spinella、Clelia Galati、Giuseppe Grasso、Luisa D’Urso、Margherita Romeo、Luisa Diomede、Mario Salmona、Corrado Bongiorno、Giovanni Di Fabio、Carmelo La Rosa、Danilo Milardi
DOI:10.1021/acschemneuro.7b00110
日期:2017.8.16
The self-assembling of the amyloid beta (A beta) peptide into neurotoxic aggregates is considered a central event in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Based on the "amyloid hypothesis", many efforts have been devoted to designing molecules able to halt disease progression by inhibiting A beta self-assembly. Here, we combine biophysical (ThT assays, TEM and AFM imaging), biochemical (WB and ESI-MS), and computational (all-atom molecular dynamics) techniques to investigate the capacity of four optically pure components of the natural product silymarin (silybin A, silybin B, 2,3-dehydrosilybin A, 2,3-dehydrosilybin B) to inhibit A beta aggregation. Despite TEM analysis demonstrated that all the four investigated flavonoids prevent the formation of mature fibrils, ThT assays, WB and AFM investigations showed that only silybin B was able to halt the growth of small-sized protofibrils thus promoting the formation of large, amorphous aggregates. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations indicated that silybin B interacts mainly with the C-terminal hydrophobic segment (35)MVGGVV(40) of A beta 40. Consequently to silybin B binding, the peptide conformation remains predominantly unstructured along all the simulations. By contrast, silybin A interacts preferentially with the segments (LVFF20)-L-17 and (27)NKGAI(132) of A beta 40 which shows a high tendency to form bend, turn, and beta-sheet conformation in and around these two domains. Both 2,3-dehydrosilybin enantiomers bind preferentially the segment (LVFF20)-L-17 but lead to the formation of different small-sized, ThT-positive A beta aggregates. Finally, in vivo studies in a transgenic Caenorhabditis elegans strain expressing human A beta indicated that silybin B is the most effective of the four compounds in counteracting A beta proteotoxicity. This study underscores the pivotal role of stereochemistry in determining the neuroprotective potential of silybins and points to silybin B as a promising lead compound for further development in anti-AD therapeutics.