A cell-active fragment targets the microRNA-372 hairpin precursor

Fragment-based lead discovery against RNA has been a theme on Practical Fragments for well over a decade. Unfortunately, most of the resulting hits are either weak or non-druglike. A paper published late last year in J. Am Chem. Soc. by Matthew Disney and collaborators at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida provides a nice counter example.

 

The researchers started by building a new fragment library based on known RNA-binding molecules – a venerable approach we first described back in 2009. The most common scaffolds differ somewhat from the most common scaffolds found in drugs (see here), with pyrimidines, triazoles, furans, and benzimidazoles over-represented. A set of 2500 fragments mostly conforming to the rule of three was purchased from ChemDiv, and the structures of all of them are helpfully provided in the supporting information.

 

Most fragment screening efforts start with a target of interest, but here the researchers chose a “library-versus-library” format, in which they screened all 2500 fragments against 5120 different RNAs. Each RNA molecule consisted of an identical 40-nucleotide hairpin containing randomized 3 x 2 or 3 x 3 internal nucleotide loops. Fragments were immobilized onto an agarose-coated microarray and radiolabeled RNA was added. Interestingly, only 19 fragments were found to bind the RNA. Competition experiments with other RNA sequences and DNA reduced the number of specific binders down to three. RNA sequencing experiments revealed that two of these fragments were fairly promiscuous, each binding over 100 different RNAs, but compound 3 bound just 28 RNAs with the 3 x 2 internal loop and none with the 3 x 3 internal loop.

 

Having identified specific RNA sequences bound by compound 3, the researchers searched human microRNAs (miRNAs) and found that the pre-miR-372 contains a bulge predicted to bind. When this RNA is processed it produces miR-372, which represses translation of the tumor suppressor LATS2, thereby increasing cellular proliferation. Perhaps the binding of compound 3 to the pre-miRNA would impede its processing.

 

The affinity of compound 3 for pre-miR-372 was measured to be 300 nM, giving it an impressively high ligand efficiency. In vitro experiments showed that the compound blocked processing by the enzyme Dicer. The researchers conducted a series of cellular experiments showing that compound 3 decreased levels of miR-372 and increased pre-miR-372m while having no effect on 379 other miRNAs. Encouragingly, compound 3 also increased levels of LATS2 mRNA and protein and decreased cell proliferation. Additional experiments with siRNA, mutated versions of pre-miR-372, and cell lines with lower levels of miR-372 all support the on-target mechanism.

 

This is a lovely paper, and compound 3 appears to be a good starting point for further optimization. However, the work also suggests why finding lead-like RNA binders may be so difficult. In the library-vs-library approach described, the researchers studied 12,800,000 different molecular interactions and came up with just three (somewhat) specific binders. The ligandability of RNA – or at least the small internal loops studied here – appears to be low. To prospectively find hits against specific RNAs may require much larger fragment libraries than are typically used. Perhaps this could be an application for DNA-encoded fragment libraries, which we wrote about here.