Lysosomal degradation of glycosphingolipids is mediated by the consecutive action of several glycosidases. Malfunctioning of one of these hydrolases can lead to a lysosomal storage disorder such as Fabry disease, which is caused by a deficiency in α-galactosidase A. Herein we describe the development of potent and selective activity-based probes that target retaining α-galactosidases. The fluorescently labeled aziridine-based probes 3 and 4 inhibit the two human retaining α-galactosidases αGal A and αGal B covalently and with high affinity. Moreover, they enable the visualization of the endogenous activity of both α-galactosidases in cell extracts, thereby providing a means to study the presence and location of active enzyme levels in different cell types, such as healthy cells versus those derived from Fabry patients.

Cyclitol epoxides and aziridines are potent and selective irreversible inhibitors of retaining glycosidases. We have previously reported on our studies on the use of activity‐based probes derived from cyclophellitol and from its aziridine analogue for activity‐based profiling of retaining β‐glucosidases in vitro, in situ, and in some examples also in vivo. In this work we disclose full details of the synthesis, purification, and analysis of a comprehensive panel of cyclophellitol analogues, all featuring the β‐glucose configuration and designed as tools for selective inhibition and/or imaging of human acid glucosylceramidase (epoxides) or as broad‐spectrum probes for retaining β‐glucosidases (aziridines).

Golgi mannosidase II (GMII) catalyzes the sequential hydrolysis of two mannosyl residues from GlcNAc-Man 5 GlcNAc 2 to produce GlcNAcMan 3 GlcNAc 2 , the precursor for all complex N-glycans, including the branched N-glycans associated with cancer. Inhibitors of GMII are potential cancer therapeutics, but their usefulness is limited by off-target effects, which produce α-mannosidosis-like symptoms. Despite many structural and mechanistic studies of GMII, we still lack a potent and selective inhibitor of this enzyme. Here, we synthesized manno-epicyclophellitol epoxide and aziridines and demonstrate their covalent modification and time-dependent inhibition of GMII. Application of fluorescent manno-epi-cyclophellitol aziridine derivatives enabled activity-based protein profiling of α-mannosidases from both human cell lysate and mouse tissue extracts. Synthesized probes also facilitated a fluorescence polarization-based screen for dGMII inhibitors. We identified seven previously unknown inhibitors of GMII from a library of over 350 iminosugars and investigated their binding modalities through X-ray crystallography. Our results reveal previously unobserved inhibitor binding modes and promising scaffolds for the generation of selective GMII inhibitors.

Cyclophellitol and cyclophellitol aziridine are potent and irreversible mechanism‐based inhibitors of retaining β‐glucosidases. Alterations in the configuration of these compounds can lead to irreversible inhibition of different classes of retaining glycosidases. We have recently reported on the design of a set of α‐galactopyranose‐configured cyclophellitol and cyclophellitol aziridine derivatives that inhibit human retaining α‐galactosidases. Moreover, we have shown that fluorescently labeled derivatives enable the activity‐based profiling of these enzymes in vitro. In this report we describe in detail the synthetic strategies that were used to obtain these epoxide‐ and aziridine‐based probes. In addition, we describe the parallel synthesis of a set of β‐galactopyranose‐configured cyclophellitol isomers as putative inhibitors of retaining β‐galactosidases.

The conformational analysis of glycosidases affords a route to their specific inhibition through transition-state mimicry. Inspired by the rapid reaction rates of cyclophellitol and cyclophellitol aziridine—both covalent retaining β-glucosidase inhibitors—we postulated that the corresponding carba “cyclopropyl” analogue would be a potent retaining β-glucosidase inhibitor for those enzymes reacting through the 4H3 transition-state conformation. Ab initio metadynamics simulations of the conformational free energy landscape for the cyclopropyl inhibitors show a strong bias for the 4H3 conformation, and carba-cyclophellitol, with an N-(4-azidobutyl)carboxamide moiety, proved to be a potent inhibitor (Ki = 8.2 nM) of the Thermotoga maritimaTmGH1 β-glucosidase. 3-D structural analysis and comparison with unreacted epoxides show that this compound indeed binds in the 4H3 conformation, suggesting that conformational strain induced through a cyclopropyl unit may add to the armory of tight-binding inhibitor designs.