Discovery of an in vivo chemical probe of the lysine methyltransferases G9a and GLP

  • J Med Chem. 2013 Nov 14;56(21):8931-42. doi: 10.1021/jm401480r.
Feng Liu  1 ,  Dalia Barsyte-Lovejoy ,  Fengling Li ,  Yan Xiong ,  Victoria Korboukh ,  Xi-Ping Huang ,  Abdellah Allali-Hassani ,  William P Janzen ,  Bryan L Roth ,  Stephen V Frye ,  Cheryl H Arrowsmith ,  Peter J Brown ,  Masoud Vedadi ,  Jian Jin
Affiliations
  • 1. Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery, Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry, UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, ‡National Institute of Mental Health Psychoactive Drug Screening Program, §Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, and ∥Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, United States.
PMID: 24102134 DOI: 10.1021/jm401480r
Abstract

Among epigenetic "writers", "readers", and "erasers", the lysine methyltransferases G9a and GLP, which catalyze mono- and dimethylation of histone H3 lysine 9 (H3K9me2) and nonhistone proteins, have been implicated in a variety of human diseases. A "toolkit" of well-characterized chemical probes will allow biological and disease hypotheses concerning these proteins to be tested in cell-based and animal models with high confidence. We previously discovered potent and selective G9a/GLP inhibitors including the cellular chemical probe UNC0638, which displays an excellent separation of functional potency and cell toxicity. However, this inhibitor is not suitable for animal studies due to its poor pharmacokinetic (PK) properties. Here, we report the discovery of the first G9a and GLP in vivo chemical probe UNC0642, which not only maintains high in vitro and cellular potency, low cell toxicity, and excellent selectivity, but also displays improved in vivo PK properties, making it suitable for animal studies.

Products