Reversibly Reactive Affinity Selection-Mass Spectrometry Enables Identification of Covalent Peptide Binders

J Am Chem Soc. 2024 Jun 5;146(22):15627-15639. doi: 10.1021/jacs.4c05571. Epub 2024 May 21.

Abstract

Covalent peptide binders have found applications as activity-based probes and as irreversible therapeutic inhibitors. Currently, there is no rapid, label-free, and tunable affinity selection platform to enrich covalent reactive peptide binders from synthetic libraries. We address this challenge by developing a reversibly reactive affinity selection platform termed ReAct-ASMS enabled by tandem high-resolution mass spectrometry (MS/MS) to identify covalent peptide binders to native protein targets. It uses mixed disulfide-containing peptides to build reversible peptide-protein conjugates that can enrich for covalent variants, which can be sequenced by MS/MS after reduction. Using this platform, we identified covalent peptide binders against two oncoproteins, human papillomavirus 16 early protein 6 (HPV16 E6) and peptidyl-prolyl cis-trans isomerase NIMA-interacting 1 protein (Pin1). The resulting peptide binders efficiently and selectively cross-link Cys58 of E6 at 37 °C and Cys113 of Pin1 at room temperature, respectively. ReAct-ASMS enables the identification of highly selective covalent peptide binders for diverse molecular targets, introducing an applicable platform to assist preclinical therapeutic development pipelines.

MeSH terms

  • Humans
  • NIMA-Interacting Peptidylprolyl Isomerase / antagonists & inhibitors
  • NIMA-Interacting Peptidylprolyl Isomerase / chemistry
  • NIMA-Interacting Peptidylprolyl Isomerase / metabolism
  • Oncogene Proteins, Viral / chemistry
  • Peptides* / chemistry
  • Protein Binding
  • Repressor Proteins / antagonists & inhibitors
  • Repressor Proteins / chemistry
  • Repressor Proteins / metabolism
  • Tandem Mass Spectrometry / methods

Substances

  • Peptides
  • Oncogene Proteins, Viral
  • E6 protein, Human papillomavirus type 16
  • NIMA-Interacting Peptidylprolyl Isomerase
  • Repressor Proteins
  • PIN1 protein, human