Kinetic Optimization of Lysine-Targeting Covalent Inhibitors of HSP72

The covalent inhibition mechanism of action, which overcomes competition with high-affinity, high-abundance substrates of challenging protein targets, can deliver effective chemical probes and drugs. The success of this strategy has centered on exposed cysteine residues as nucleophiles but the low abundance of cysteine in the proteome has limited its application. We have recently reported our discovery that lysine-56 in the difficult-to-drug target HSP72 could form a covalent bond with a small-molecule inhibitor. We now disclose the optimization of these targeted covalent inhibitors using rational design. Essential to our optimization was the development of a new covalent fluorescence polarization assay, which allows for the direct measurement of the key kinetic parameter in covalent inhibitor design, k_inact/K_I, extrapolation of the underlying parameters, k_inact and K_i, and direct comparison to reversible analogues. Using our approach, we demonstrate a >100-fold enhancement in covalent efficiency and key learnings in lysine-selective electrophile optimization.