7rcu

Publication Abstract from PubMed

Despite unequivocal roles in disease, transcription factors (TFs) remain largely untapped as pharmacologic targets due to the challenges in targeting protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions. Here we report a chemical strategy to generate modular synthetic transcriptional repressors (STRs) derived from the bHLH domain of MAX. Our synthetic approach yields chemically stabilized tertiary domain mimetics that cooperatively bind the MYC/MAX consensus E-box motif with nanomolar affinity, exhibit specificity that is equivalent to or beyond that of full-length TFs and directly compete with MYC/MAX protein for DNA binding. A lead STR directly inhibits MYC binding in cells, downregulates MYC-dependent expression programs at the proteome level and inhibits MYC-dependent cell proliferation. Co-crystallization and structure determination of a STR:E-box DNA complex confirms retention of DNA recognition in a near identical manner as full-length bHLH TFs. We additionally demonstrate structure-blind design of STRs derived from alternative bHLH-TFs, confirming that STRs can be used to develop highly specific mimetics of TFs targeting other gene regulatory elements.

Targeting MYC with modular synthetic transcriptional repressors derived from bHLH DNA-binding domains.,Speltz TE, Qiao Z, Swenson CS, Shangguan X, Coukos JS, Lee CW, Thomas DM, Santana J, Fanning SW, Greene GL, Moellering RE Nat Biotechnol. 2023 Apr;41(4):541-551. doi: 10.1038/s41587-022-01504-x. Epub , 2022 Oct 27. PMID:36302987^[1]

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.