Fragments deliver a chemical probe for BRD9

Bromodomains have nothing to do with bromine. Rather, they are small (~110 amino acid) domains that recognize acetylated lysine residues, a common modification on histones, and are thus key epigenetic “readers”. Humans have more than 60 of them, and as you can imagine selectivity is not assured. However, fragments have proven very useful in targeting these proteins. Since the first mention of bromodomains on Practical Fragments back in 2011 the number of posts has been growing rapidly, so for the first time ever we’ve decided to devote an entire month to the topic.

In other words, July is bromodomain month! We’ll start with two papers against the bromodomain BRD9, part of the SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling complex that seems to be important for acute myeloid leukemia.

The first paper, in J. Med. Chem. (and open access), is published by Laetitia Martin and collaborators at Boehringer Ingelheim, University of Oxford, and Cold Spring Harbor. The researchers used three orthogonal biophysical screening methods: differential scanning fluorimetry (DSF), surface plasmon resonance (SPR), and microscale thermophoresis (MST). A library of 1697 fragments was screened at 0.4 mM (DSF), 0.1 mM (SPR) or 0.5 mM (MST), and hits were then validated using ¹⁵N HSQC NMR. The 77 hits that confirmed were taken into crystallography, producing 55 structures.

Validation rates in the NMR secondary screen were excellent for DSF (94%) and SPR (84%) but less so for MST (31%). That said, of the 38 validated hits from MST, 29 were not found in either of the other techniques, and 14 of these produced crystal structures. This is a useful reminder that while screening cascades can whittle down many hits, they do run the risk of throwing out the proverbial babies along with the bathwater.

In parallel with the biophysical screens, a virtual screen of ~73,500 fragments was conducted using Glide to identify 208 fragments that were then tested using SPR and DSF. This led to 23 hits, 11 of which produced crystal structures.

Two of the more potent fragments were the structurally related compound 3 (from the biophysical screen) and compound 4 (from the virtual screen). Optimization started with compound 4 by adding electron donating groups to the phenyl ring to try to improve a stacking interaction observed in the crystal structure. This led to compound 10, and building out the other ring to make it more similar to fragment 3 led to BI-9564.

BI-9564 has low nanomolar activity in both a biochemical assay as well as isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC). It is also quite selective: among 48 other bromodomains, it only hits the closely related BRD7 and CECR, and it is >10-fold more potent on BRD9. None of a panel of 321 kinases were inhibited with IC₅₀ < 5 µM, and only 2 of 55 GPCRs were inhibited. The compound is also cell active, reasonably soluble, has good pharmacokinetics in mice, and orally bioavailable. In short, BI-9564 is an excellent chemical probe – and is in fact being offered as such.

While we’re on the subject of BRD7 and BRD9, it’s worth noting another recent paper, this one in ChemBioChem from Ke Ruan and colleagues at the University of Science and Technology of China. The researchers screened their library of 890 fragments against BRD7 using three different ligand-detected NMR techniques: STD, WaterLOGSY, and CPMG. Fragments were screened in pools of 10 with each fragment present at 400 µM. This yielded just 10 hits, of which 5 confirmed when tested individually. Protein-observed NMR was then performed on these, suggesting that they all bind in the acetyl-lysine recognition sites; they have similar affinities for both BRD7 and BRD9, with dissociation constants between 22 and 600 µM. Crystallography confirmed the binding mode for one of the fragments bound to BRD9. Interestingly, this showed quite a bit of plasticity in the protein compared to the un-liganded structure. Indeed, the BI researchers suggest that different degrees of protein flexibility between BRD7 and BRD9 could account for the selectivity differences observed for BI-9564.

Stay tuned next week for more fragment-screening against a different class of bromodomains!