Glycosyltransferases (GT) are enzymes that catalyze the attachment of a sugar moiety to many different acceptor molecules in cells, in most cases through a glycosidic bond with nucleophilic oxygen of the acceptor. They use donor substrates activated with phosphate leaving groups, most commonly nucleoside diphosphates.
O-β-N-acetyl-D-glucosaminyl transferase (OGT) is the only GT that catalyzes the addition of the N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc) moiety from the donor substrate UDP-GlcNAc to serine (Ser) and threonine (Thr) residues of acceptor proteins. This post-translational modification (PTM) plays an important role in a variety of cellular processes. Abnormal levels of O-GlcNAcylation have been found in chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and Alzheimer's disease. Due to the important role that OGT plays in normal cell functions and in the pathogenesis of various chronic diseases, the synthesis of potent and selective inhibitors would greatly impact the future understanding and treatment of these diseases.
In this Master's thesis, we designed and synthesized potential OGT inhibitors based on the quinolin-2-one scaffold discovered by researchers at the Faculty of Pharmacy in Ljubljana by structure-based virtual screening.
Fragments based on this core are weak OGT inhibitors that target the uridine binding site of the donor substrate. By synthesizing a new library of inhibitors with this core, we aimed to improve the physicochemical properties of the fragments and explore their structure-activity relationships (SAR). We coupled various aromatic and aliphatic amines to the quinolin-2-one core by reductive amination. In this way, we enlarged the molecules and investigated the effect that different substituents have on the potency of inhibition.
The final compounds were then tested for their inhibitory activity against OGT using a direct fluorescence activity assay. The preliminary results indicated that future modifications of the assay are needed in order to obtain more accurate and reliable results.
|