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Identification of Small Molecule Inhibitors of Tau Aggregation by Targeting Monomeric Tau As a Potential Therapeutic Approach for Tauopathies.


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Authors

Pickhardt, Marcus 
Neumann, Thomas 
Schwizer, Daniel 
Callaway, Kari 
Vendruscolo, Michele  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3616-1610

Abstract

A potential strategy to alleviate the aggregation of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) is to maintain the native functional state of the protein by small molecule binding. However, the targeting of the native state of IDPs by small molecules has been challenging due to their heterogeneous conformational ensembles. To tackle this challenge, we applied a high-throughput chemical microarray surface plasmon resonance imaging screen to detect the binding between small molecules and monomeric full-length Tau, a protein linked with the onset of a range of Tauopathies. The screen identified a novel set of drug-like fragment and lead-like compounds that bound to Tau. We verified that the majority of these hit compounds reduced the aggregation of different Tau constructs in vitro and in N2a cells. These results demonstrate that Tau is a viable receptor of drug-like small molecules. The drug discovery approach that we present can be applied to other IDPs linked to other misfolding diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.

Description

Keywords

Animals, Benzothiazoles, Cell Line, Tumor, Cell Survival, Dose-Response Relationship, Drug, Drug Evaluation, Preclinical, Fluorescent Dyes, High-Throughput Screening Assays, Humans, Mice, Microarray Analysis, Microscopy, Fluorescence, Molecular Structure, Neuroprotective Agents, Protein Aggregates, Protein Multimerization, Tauopathies, Thiazoles, tau Proteins

Journal Title

Curr Alzheimer Res

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1567-2050
1875-5828

Volume Title

12

Publisher

Bentham Science Publishers Ltd.
Sponsorship
Wellcome Trust (089703/Z/09/Z)
Wellcome Trust (081864/Z/06/Z)
Medical Research Council (MC_G1000734)
We thank the Wellcome Trust (UK), Medical Research Council (UK), Elan Pharmaceuticals (USA), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Canada) and the Alzheimer Society of Ontario (Canada), and Hungarian Brain Research Program (KTIA_NAP_13-2014-0009) for funding.