The influenza A virus M2 proton channel (A/M2) is the target of the antiviral drugs amantadine and rimantadine, whose use has been discontinued due to widespread drug resistance. Among the handful of drug-resistant mutants, S31N is found in more than 95% of the currently circulating viruses and shows greatly decreased inhibition by amantadine. The discovery of inhibitors of S31N has been hampered by the limited size, polarity, and dynamic nature of its amantadine-binding site. Nevertheless, we have discovered smallmolecule drugs that inhibit S31N with potencies greater than amantadine's potency against WT M2. Drug binding locks the protein into a well-defined conformation, and the NMR structure of the complex shows the drug bound in the homotetrameric channel, threaded between the side chains of Asn31. Unrestrained molecular dynamics simulations predicted the same binding site. This S31N inhibitor, like other potent M2 inhibitors, contains a charged ammonium group. The ammonium binds as a hydrate to one of three sites aligned along the central cavity that appear to be hotspots for inhibition. These sites might stabilize hydronium-like species formed as protons diffuse through the outer channel to the proton-shuttling residue His37 near the cytoplasmic end of the channel.M2-S31N mutant structure | membrane protein structure |
M2-S31N inhibitorT he influenza A virus M2 proton channel (A/M2) is the target of the antiviral drugs amantadine and rimantadine (1-3), which bind directly to the pore of the channel (2-4). Although amantadine has been widely used for several decades, drug resistance has curtailed the use of this family of drugs. Many amantadineresistant influenza viruses can be selected in cell culture (5, 6). A subset of these mutations is found in infected patients undergoing treatment with amantadine (7), and reverse-engineered viruses harboring various pore-lining mutations are competent to replicate in the mouse (8). However, many of these mutations give rise to somewhat attenuated viruses that are less transmissible than WT virus, and they tend to revert in the absence of drug pressure (6, 9). Indeed, large-scale sequencing of transmissible viruses isolated as early as 1918 showed that mutations to pore-lining residues are allowed only within the first turn of the transmembrane (TM) helix at positions 26, 27, and 31 (10). S31N has long been the predominant amantadine-resistant mutation in M2 (11)(12)(13)(14). It predominated in 98-100% of the transmissible amantadineresistant H1N1, H5N1, and H3N2 strains isolated from humans, birds, and swine in the past decade. V27A and L26F are less frequent mutations (10,11,15). Extensive studies of point mutations to the pore-lining residues of M2 have been conducted to understand the paucity of natural variants (16,17). Numerous mutants in the N-terminal aqueous pore retained the ability to conduct protons selectively over other ions, although the magnitude and pH dependence of their conduction varied. However, only a few mutations at the most distal sites, V27A,...