Steroid receptor coactivator-1 (SRC-1) is a transcription coactivator playing a pivotal role in mediating a wide range of signaling pathways by interacting with related transcription factors and nuclear receptors. Aberrantly elevated SRC-1 activity is associated with cancer metastasis and progression, and therefore, suppression of SRC-1 is emerging as a promising therapeutic strategy. In this study, we developed a novel SRC-1 degrader for targeted degradation of cellular SRC-1. This molecule consists of a selective ligand for SRC-1 and a bulky hydrophobic group. Since the hydrophobic moiety on the protein surface could mimic a partially denatured hydrophobic region of a protein, SRC-1 could be recognized as an unfolded protein and experience the chaperone-mediated degradation in the cells through the ubiquitin–proteasome system (UPS). Our results demonstrate that a hydrophobic-tagged chimeric molecule is shown to significantly reduce cellular levels of SRC-1 and suppress cancer cell migration and invasion. Together, these results highlight that our SRC-1 degrader represents a novel class of therapeutic candidates for targeting cancer metastasis. Moreover, we believe that the hydrophobic tagging strategy would be widely applicable to develop peptide-based protein degraders with enhanced cellular activity.

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Developing DNA‐encoded libraries of privileged scaffolds, such as pyrrolopyrimidines, is of great interest in drug discovery and chemical biology as a powerful tool to rapidly and inexpensively discover potent drug candidates. However, it is often challenging to construct such DNA‐encoded libraries because many reaction conditions are not compatible with DNA. Here, we describe the development of a convenient solid‐phase synthetic strategy that overcomes the current limitations and allows the efficient synthesis of a DNA‐encoded combinatorial library of structurally diverse tetra‐substituted pyrrolo[2,3‐d]pyrimidines.

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