Article In: orcid, cienciavitae

Fluorescent light-up acridine orange derivatives bind and stabilize KRAS-22RT G-quadruplex

Biochimie

Carvalho, Josue; Pereira, Edgar; Cruz, Carla — 2018 — Elsevier

Key information

Authors:

Carvalho, Josue; Pereira, Edgar; Marquevielle, Julien; Campello, Maria P C (Maria Paula Cordeiro Crespo Cabral Campello Aboim de Barros); Mergny, Jean-Louis; Paulo, Antonio (António Manuel Rocha Paulo); Salgado, Gilmar F; Queiroz, Joao A; Cruz, Carla

Published in

January 2018

Abstract

KRAS is often found mutated in lethal cancers and should be an important target for anticancer drug development. However, no effective inhibitor has been reported so far, prompting the scientific community to describe the RAS proteins as nearly “undruggable”. Recent approaches developed to modulate KRAS protein expression comprises the targeting of G-quadruplex (G4) structures formed within the nuclease hypersensitive element of KRAS promoter region, by designing small and specific ligands to stabilize the tertiary fold and reduce gene expression. In this work, we report in vitro and in silico studies of novel acridine orange (AO) derivatives (C3-C8), developed as G4 stabilizing agents. The results show that the ligands bind with high affinity and stabilize KRAS22-RT G4 with modest specificity over duplex DNA. The most promising ligand C8 stabilizes the structure by ≈ 40 °C. Molecular docking using NMR-derived distance restraints reveal atomic details about the ligand structural features in the interaction with KRAS22-RT G4. In vitro studies with HeLa cells show that the ligands are cytotoxic with IC50 values between 0.9 μM and 5.7 μM. Moreover, the ligands tend to localize in the nucleus as shown by confocal fluorescence microscopy. Overall, these results show that the reported AO ligands display favourable properties as G4 ligands and this study provides structural detail for the development of lead KRAS G4 ligands.

Publication details

Authors in the community:

Publication version

AO - Author's Original

Publisher

Elsevier

Link to the publisher's version

https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/biochimie

Title of the publication container

Biochimie

First page or article number

152

Volume

144

ISSN

0300-9084

DOI

10.1016/j.biochi.2017.11.004

WoS (Web of Science)

WOS:000418496400016

Fields of Science and Technology (FOS)

chemical-sciences - Chemical sciences

Keywords

  • G-quadruplex
  • KRAS promoter
  • Acridine orange ligands
  • NMR spectroscopy
  • Fluorescent probes,

Publication language (ISO code)

eng - English

Alternative identifier (URI)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biochi.2017.11.004

Rights type:

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