Mechanistic Studies of Drug‐Like Inhibitors of P‐glycoprotein using ATPase Assays, Electron Spin Resonance Spectroscopy and Cancer Cell Models

Abstract

Multidrug resistance (MDR) in cancer and other diseases is frequently associated with transmembrane efflux proteins, one of which is P‐glycoprotein (P‐gp). Over‐expression of P‐gp in cancer cells increases the efflux of therapeutic drugs rendering them ineffective. In order to re‐sensitize multidrug resistant cancers to chemotherapy, we have found inhibitors of P‐gp by in silico screening methods (Brewer et al., Molecular pharmacology 86, 716–726, 2014), and several of these inhibitors were shown to successfully overcome MDR in the drug resistant DU145TXR prostate cancer cell line (Follit et al., Pharmacol. Res. Perspect. 3, e00170, 2015). In this study, we expanded our cell culture screening to evaluate 25 new compounds identified by our in silico screening method and report that over 30% of these compounds re‐sensitized DU145TXR cancer cells to chemotherapy, while not exhibiting significant toxicity to the non‐cancerous human lung fibroblast (HFL‐1) cell line. The best of the identified hit compounds were further investigated with regard to the mechanism of inhibition using ATPase activity assays and electron spin resonance spectroscopy (ESR). Several of the best compounds were found to inhibit ATPase activity. Using a spin‐labeled ATP analog and ESR spectroscopy, we assessed the effects of the identified inhibitors on ATP binding to P‐gp. Variants of one of the original hit compounds, SMU 29, that were computationally predicted to interact more strongly with P‐gp have been synthesized and were analyzed here for their effects on P‐gp ATPase activity and ATP binding characteristics.Support or Funding InformationThis work is supported by NIH NIGMS [R15GM094771‐02] to John G. Wise, SMU University Research Council, the SMU Center for Drug Discovery, Design and Delivery, the Communities Foundation of Texas, and a private gift from Ms. Suzy Ruff of Dallas, Texas, as well as the Hamilton Undergraduate Research Scholars Program and the SMU Summer Research Assistantship and Undergraduate Research Assistantship Programs.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.