characterizing-individual-protein-aggregates-infrared

Characterizing Individual Protein Aggregates by Infrared Nanospectroscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy

The phenomenon of protein misfolding and aggregation results in the formation of highly heterogeneous protein aggregates, which are associated with ...

University of Cambridge

The aggregation process of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) has been associated with a wide range of neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Currently, however, no drug in clinical use targets IDP aggregation. To facilitate drug discovery programs in this important and challenging area, we describe a fragment-based approach of generating small-molecule libraries that target specific IDPs. The method is based on the use of molecular fragments extracted from compounds reported in the literature to inhibit of the aggregation of IDPs. These fragments are used to screen existing large generic libraries of small molecules to form smaller libraries specific for given IDPs. We illustrate this approach by describing three distinct small-molecule libraries to target, Aβ, tau, and α-synuclein, which are three IDPs implicated in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. The strategy described here offers novel opportunities for the identification of effective molecular scaffolds for drug discovery for neurodegenerative disorders and to provide insights into the mechanism of small-molecule binding to IDPs. 

A Fragment-Based Method of Creating Small-Molecule Libraries to Target the Aggregation of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins.

The conversion of the β-amyloid (Aβ) peptide into pathogenic aggregates is linked to the onset and progression of Alzheimer's disease. Although this observation has prompted an extensive search for therapeutic agents to modulate the concentration of Aβ or inhibit its aggregation, all clinical trials with these objectives have so far failed, at least in part because of a lack of understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the process of aggregation and its inhibition. To address this problem, we describe a chemical kinetics approach for rational drug discovery, in which the effects of small molecules on the rates of specific microscopic steps in the self-assembly of Aβ42, the most aggregation-prone variant of Aβ, are analyzed quantitatively. By applying this approach, we report that bexarotene, an anticancer drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, selectively targets the primary nucleation step in Aβ42 aggregation, delays the formation of toxic species in neuroblastoma cells, and completely suppresses Aβ42 deposition and its consequences in a Caenorhabditis elegans model of Aβ42-mediated toxicity. These results suggest that the prevention of the primary nucleation of Aβ42 by compounds such as bexarotene could potentially reduce the risk of onset of Alzheimer's disease and, more generally, that our strategy provides a general framework for the rational identification of a range of candidate drugs directed against neurodegenerative disorders. 

An anticancer drug suppresses the primary nucleation reaction that initiates the production of the toxic Aβ42 aggregates linked with Alzheimer's disease.

The aggregation of the 42-residue form of the amyloid-β peptide (Aβ42) is a pivotal event in Alzheimer's disease (AD). The use of chemical kinetics has recently enabled highly accurate quantifications of the effects of small molecules on specific microscopic steps in Aβ42 aggregation. Here, we exploit this approach to develop a rational drug discovery strategy against Aβ42 aggregation that uses as a read-out the changes in the nucleation and elongation rate constants caused by candidate small molecules. We thus identify a pool of compounds that target specific microscopic steps in Aβ42 aggregation. We then test further these small molecules in human cerebrospinal fluid and in a Caenorhabditis elegans model of AD. Our results show that this strategy represents a powerful approach to identify systematically small molecule lead compounds, thus offering an appealing opportunity to reduce the attrition problem in drug discovery.

Systematic development of small molecules to inhibit specific microscopic steps of Aβ42 aggregation in Alzheimer's disease.

The coaggregation of the amyloid-β peptide (Aβ) and α-synuclein is commonly observed in a range of neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. The complex interplay between Aβ and α-synuclein has led to seemingly contradictory results on whether α-synuclein promotes or inhibits Aβ aggregation. Here, we show how these conflicts can be rationalized and resolved by demonstrating that different structural forms of α-synuclein exert different effects on Aβ aggregation. Our results demonstrate that whereas monomeric α-synuclein blocks the autocatalytic proliferation of Aβ42 (the 42-residue form of Aβ) fibrils, fibrillar α-synuclein catalyses the heterogeneous nucleation of Aβ42 aggregates. It is thus the specific balance between the concentrations of monomeric and fibrillar α-synuclein that determines the outcome of the Aβ42 aggregation reaction.

Monomeric and fibrillar α-synuclein exert opposite effects on the catalytic cycle that promotes the proliferation of Aβ42 aggregates.

Understanding how normally soluble peptides and proteins aggregate to form amyloid fibrils is central to many areas of modern biomolecular science, ranging from the development of functional biomaterials to the design of rational therapeutic strategies against increasingly prevalent medical conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. As such, there is a great need to develop models to mechanistically describe how amyloid fibrils are formed from precursor peptides and proteins. Here we review and discuss how ideas and concepts from chemical reaction kinetics can help to achieve this objective. In particular, we show how a combination of theory, experiments, and computer simulations, based on chemical kinetics, provides a general formalism for uncovering, at the molecular level, the mechanistic steps that underlie the phenomenon of amyloid fibril formation.

Chemical Kinetics for Bridging Molecular Mechanisms and Macroscopic Measurements of Amyloid Fibril Formation.

Alzheimer's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder associated with the aberrant aggregation of the amyloid-β peptide. Although increasing evidence implicates cholesterol in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease, the detailed mechanistic link between this lipid molecule and the disease process remains to be fully established. To address this problem, we adopt a kinetics-based strategy that reveals a specific catalytic role of cholesterol in the aggregation of Aβ42 (the 42-residue form of the amyloid-β peptide). More specifically, we demonstrate that lipid membranes containing cholesterol promote Aβ42 aggregation by enhancing its primary nucleation rate by up to 20-fold through a heterogeneous nucleation pathway. We further show that this process occurs as a result of cooperativity in the interaction of multiple cholesterol molecules with Aβ42. These results identify a specific microscopic pathway by which cholesterol dramatically enhances the onset of Aβ42 aggregation, thereby helping rationalize the link between Alzheimer's disease and the impairment of cholesterol homeostasis.

Cholesterol catalyses Aβ42 aggregation through a heterogeneous nucleation pathway in the presence of lipid membranes.

Small oligomers formed during the aggregation of certain peptides and proteins are highly cytotoxic in numerous neurodegenerative disorders. Because of their transient nature and conformational heterogeneity, however, the structural and biological features of these oligomers are still poorly understood. Here, we describe a method of generating stable oligomers formed by the Alzheimer's Aβ peptide by carrying out an aggregation reaction in the presence of zinc ions. The resulting oligomers are amenable to detailed biophysical and biological characterization, which reveals a homogeneous population with small size, high cross-β sheet structure content, and extended hydrophobic surface patches. We also show that these oligomers decrease the viability of neuroblastoma cells and impair the motility of C. elegans. The availability of these oligomers offers novel opportunities for studying the mechanisms of Aβ toxicity in vitro and in cellular and animal models of Alzheimer's disease.

Stabilization and Characterization of Cytotoxic Aβ Oligomers Isolated from an Aggregation Reaction in the Presence of Zinc Ions.

Scanning probe microscopy provides a unique window into the morphology, mechanics, and structure of proteins and their complexes on the nanoscale. Such measurements require, however, deposition of samples onto substrates. This process can affect conformations and assembly states of the molecular species under investigation and can bias the molecular populations observed in heterogeneous samples through differential adsorption. Here, we show that these limitations can be overcome with a single-step microfluidic spray deposition platform. This method transfers biological solutions to substrates as microdroplets with subpicoliter volume, drying in milliseconds, a timescale that is shorter than typical diffusion times of proteins on liquid-solid interfaces, thus avoiding surface mass transport and change to the assembly state. Finally, the single-step deposition ensures the attachment of the full molecular content of the sample to the substrate, allowing quantitative measurements of different molecular populations within heterogeneous systems, including protein aggregates.

Microfluidic deposition for resolving single-molecule protein architecture and heterogeneity.

To develop effective therapeutic strategies for protein misfolding diseases, a promising route is to identify compounds that inhibit the formation of protein oligomers. To achieve this goal, we report a structure-activity relationship (SAR) approach based on chemical kinetics to estimate quantitatively how small molecules modify the reactive flux toward oligomers. We use this estimate to derive chemical rules in the case of the amyloid beta peptide (Aβ), which we then exploit to optimize starting compounds to curtail Aβ oligomer formation. We demonstrate this approach by converting an inactive rhodanine compound into an effective inhibitor of Aβ oligomer formation by generating chemical derivatives in a systematic manner. These results provide an initial demonstration of the potential of drug discovery strategies based on targeting directly the production of protein oligomers.

SAR by kinetics for drug discovery in protein misfolding diseases.

The self-assembly of the beta-amyloid peptide (Aβ) into amyloid aggregates is a central phenomenon associated with Alzheimer's disease. Here, we report chemical modifications of key amino acid residues of Aβ (Y10, H13, H14, and M35) by photoexcited thioflavin-T (ThT), a fluorescent probe of amyloid structure. The quantitative chemical kinetics analysis shows that the oxidized monomer species does not self-assemble, nor perturb the aggregation kinetics of non-oxidized Aβ.

Chemical and mechanistic analysis of photodynamic inhibition of Alzheimer's β-amyloid aggregation.

Transient oligomeric species formed during the aggregation process of the 42-residue form of the amyloid-β peptide (Aβ) are key pathogenic agents in Alzheimer's disease (AD). To investigate the relationship between Aβ aggregation and its cytotoxicity and the influence of a potential drug on both phenomena, we have studied the effects of trodusquemine. This aminosterol enhances the rate of aggregation by promoting monomer-dependent secondary nucleation, but significantly reduces the toxicity of the resulting oligomers to neuroblastoma cells by inhibiting their binding to the cellular membranes. When administered to a C. elegans model of AD, we again observe an increase in aggregate formation alongside the suppression of Aβ-induced toxicity. In addition to oligomer displacement, the reduced toxicity could also point towards an increased rate of conversion of oligomers to less toxic fibrils. The ability of a small molecule to reduce the toxicity of oligomeric species represents a potential therapeutic strategy against AD.

Sean Chia

Centre for Misfolding Diseases,
Department of Chemistry,
Centre for Misfolding Diseases, Department of Chemistry

University of Cambridge

Characterizing Individual Protein Aggregates by Infrared Nanospectroscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy

Sean Chia

.css-o250i3{font-size:18px;font-family:Open Sans,sans-serif;line-height:21.6px;}Centre for Misfolding Diseases,Department of Chemistry,Centre for Misfolding Diseases, Department of Chemistry

University of Cambridge

Characterizing Individual Protein Aggregates by Infrared Nanospectroscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy

Centre for Misfolding Diseases,
Department of Chemistry,
Centre for Misfolding Diseases, Department of Chemistry