Calcineurin Inhibitor CN585 Exhibits Off-Target Effects in the Human Fungal Pathogen <i>Aspergillus fumigatus</i>.
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2022-12
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Calcineurin (CN) is an attractive antifungal target as it is critical for growth, stress response, drug resistance, and virulence in fungal pathogens. The immunosuppressive drugs, tacrolimus (FK506) and cyclosporin A (CsA), are fungistatic and specifically inhibit CN through binding to their respective immunophilins, FK506-binding protein (FKBP12), and cyclophilin (CypA). We are focused on CN structure-based approaches for the development of non-immunosuppressive FK506 analogs as antifungal therapeutics. Here, we examined the effect of the novel CN inhibitor, CN585, on the growth of the human pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus, the most common cause of invasive aspergillosis. Unexpectedly, in contrast to FK506, CN585 exhibited off-target effect on A. fumigatus wild-type and the azole- and echinocandin-resistant strains. Unlike with FK506 and CsA, the A. fumigatus CN, FKBP12, CypA mutants (ΔcnaA, Δfkbp12, ΔcypA) and various FK506-resistant mutants were all sensitive to CN585. Furthermore, in contrast to FK506 the cytosolic to nuclear translocation of the CN-dependent transcription factor (CrzA-GFP) was not inhibited by CN585. Molecular docking of CN585 onto human and A. fumigatus CN complexes revealed differential potential binding sites between human CN versus A. fumigatus CN. Our results indicate CN585 may be a non-specific inhibitor of CN with a yet undefined antifungal mechanism of activity.
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Juvvadi, Praveen R, Benjamin G Bobay, D Christopher Cole, Monaf Awwa and William J Steinbach (2022). Calcineurin Inhibitor CN585 Exhibits Off-Target Effects in the Human Fungal Pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus. Journal of fungi (Basel, Switzerland), 8(12). p. 1281. 10.3390/jof8121281 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/28883.
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Benjamin Bobay
I am the Assistant Director of the Duke University NMR Center and an Assistant Professor in the Duke Radiology Department. I was originally trained as a structural biochemist with an emphasis on utilizing NMR and continue to use this technique daily helping collaborators characterize protein structures and small molecules through a diverse set of NMR experiments. Through the structural characterization of various proteins, from both planta and eukaryotes, I have developed a robust protocol of utilizing computational biology for describing binding events, mutations, post-translations modifications (PTMs), and/or general behavior within in silico solution scenarios. I have utilized these techniques in collaborations ranging from plant pathologists at the Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences department at the University of Amsterdam to biomedical engineers at North Carolina State University to professors in the Pediatrics department at Duke University. These studies have centered around the structural and functional consequences of PTMs (such as phosphorylation), mutation events, truncation of multi-domain proteins, dimer pulling experiments, to screening of large databases of ligands for potential binding events. Through this combination of NMR and computational biology I have amassed 50 peer-reviewed published articles and countless roles on scientific projects, as well as the development of several tutorials concerning the creation of ligand databases and high-throughput screening of large databases utilizing several different molecular dynamic and computational docking programs.
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