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Inhibition of Hypoxia-Inducible Transcription Factor (HIF-1α) Signaling with Sulfonyl-γ-AApeptide Helices

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posted on 2023-09-06, 16:45 authored by Wei Jiang, Sami Abdulkadir, Xue Zhao, Peng Sang, Anastasia Tomatsidou, Xiujun Zhang, Yu Chen, Laurent Calcul, Xingmin Sun, Feng Cheng, Yong Hu, Jianfeng Cai
The development of inhibitors that selectively block protein–protein interactions (PPIs) is crucial for chemical biology, medicinal chemistry, and biomedical sciences. Herein, we reported the design, synthesis, and investigation of sulfonyl-γ-AApeptide as an alternative strategy of canonical peptide-based inhibitors to disrupt hypoxia-inducible factor 1α (HIF-1α) and p300 PPI by mimicking the helical domain of HIF-1α involved in the binding to p300. The designed molecules recognized the p300 protein with high affinity and potently inhibited the hypoxia-inducible signaling pathway. Gene expression profiling supported the idea that the lead molecules selectively inhibited hypoxia-inducible genes involved in the signaling cascade. Our studies also demonstrated that both helical faces consisting of either chiral side chains or achiral sulfonyl side chains of sulfonyl-γ-AApeptides could be adopted for mimicry of the α-helix engaging in PPIs. Furthermore, these sulfonyl-γ-AApeptides were cell-permeable and exhibited favorable stability and pharmacokinetic profiles. Our results could inspire the design of helical sulfonyl-γ-AApeptides as a general strategy to mimic the protein helical domain and modulate many other PPIs.

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