Screening of a Custom-Designed Acid Fragment Library Identifies 1-Phenylpyrroles and 1-Phenylpyrrolidines as Inhibitors of Notum Carboxylesterase Activity
作者:William Mahy、Mikesh Patel、David Steadman、Hannah L. Woodward、Benjamin N. Atkinson、Fredrik Svensson、Nicky J. Willis、Alister Flint、Dimitra Papatheodorou、Yuguang Zhao、Luca Vecchia、Reinis R. Ruza、James Hillier、Sarah Frew、Amy Monaghan、Artur Costa、Magda Bictash、Magnus W. Walter、E. Yvonne Jones、Paul V. Fish
DOI:10.1021/acs.jmedchem.0c00660
日期:2020.9.10
The Wnt family of proteins are secreted signaling proteins that play key roles in regulating cellular functions. Recently, carboxylesterase Notum was shown to act as a negative regulator of Wnt signaling by mediating the removal of an essential palmitoleate. Here we disclose two new chemical scaffolds that inhibit Notum enzymatic activity. Our approach was to create a fragment library of 250 acids for screening against Notum in a biochemical assay followed by structure determination by X-ray crystallography. Twenty fragments were identified as hits for Notum inhibition, and 14 of these fragments were shown to bind in the palmitoleate pocket of Notum. Optimization of 1-phenylpyrrole 20, guided by structure-based drug design, identified 20z as the most potent compound from this series. Similarly, the optimization of 1-phenylpyrrolidine 8 gave acid 26. This work demonstrates that inhibition of Notum activity can be achieved by small, drug-like molecules possessing favorable in vitro ADME profiles.