1. Academic Validation
  2. An overview of PROTACs: a promising drug discovery paradigm

An overview of PROTACs: a promising drug discovery paradigm

  • Mol Biomed. 2022 Dec 20;3(1):46. doi: 10.1186/s43556-022-00112-0.
Zi Liu # 1 Mingxing Hu # 1 Yu Yang # 1 Chenghao Du 2 Haoxuan Zhou 1 Chengyali Liu 1 Yuanwei Chen 3 Lei Fan 3 Hongqun Ma 3 Youling Gong 4 Yongmei Xie 5
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 State Key Laboratory of Biotherapy and Cancer Center, Department of Laboratory Medicine, West China Hospital, Sichuan University and Collaborative Innovation Center of Biotherapy, Chengdu, 610041, China.
  • 2 Department of Biological Sciences, USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles, 90089, USA.
  • 3 Hinova Pharmaceuticals Inc., Chengdu, 610041, China.
  • 4 Department of Thoracic Oncology, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610041, China. [email protected].
  • 5 State Key Laboratory of Biotherapy and Cancer Center, Department of Laboratory Medicine, West China Hospital, Sichuan University and Collaborative Innovation Center of Biotherapy, Chengdu, 610041, China. [email protected].
  • # Contributed equally.
Abstract

Proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs) technology has emerged as a novel therapeutic paradigm in recent years. PROTACs are heterobifunctional molecules that degrade target proteins by hijacking the ubiquitin-proteasome system. Currently, about 20-25% of all protein targets are being studied, and most works focus on their enzymatic functions. Unlike small molecules, PROTACs inhibit the whole biological function of the target protein by binding to the target protein and inducing subsequent proteasomal degradation. PROTACs compensate for limitations that transcription factors, nuclear proteins, and other scaffolding proteins are difficult to handle with traditional small-molecule inhibitors. Currently, PROTACs have successfully degraded diverse proteins, such as Btk, BRD4, AR, ER, STAT3, IRAK4, tau, etc. And ARV-110 and ARV-471 exhibited excellent efficacy in clinical II trials. However, what targets are appropriate for PROTAC technology to achieve better benefits than small-molecule inhibitors are not fully understood. And how to rationally design an efficient PROTACs and optimize it to be orally effective poses big challenges for researchers. In this review, we summarize the features of PROTAC technology, analyze the detail of general principles for designing efficient PROTACs, and discuss the typical application of PROTACs targeting different protein categories. In addition, we also introduce the progress of relevant clinical trial results of representative PROTACs and assess the challenges and limitations that PROTACs may face. Collectively, our studies provide references for further application of PROTACs.

Keywords

Design and synthesis; PROTAC; Protein degradation; Ubiquitin–proteasome system.

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