Enzyme irreversible-inhibition studies

Irreversible Inhibition Studies If an enzyme is inactivated by a reagent that reacts with a specific amino acid residue, then one (or more) of the reagent-specific amino acid residues is involved in catalysis by that enzyme. 

In cases where the mode of action is the strong or irreversible inhibition of an enzyme system, the assay may measure the extent of inhibition of this enzyme. This may be accomplished by first measuring the activity of the inhibited enzyme and then making comparison with the uninhibited enzyme. This practice is followed when studying acetylcholinesterase inhibition by organophosphates (OP). Acetylcholinesterase activity is measured in a sample of tissue of brain from an animal that has been exposed to an OP. Activity is measured in the same way in tissue samples from untreated controls of the same species, sex, age, etc. Comparison is then made between the two activity measurements, and the percentage inhibition is estimated. 

ACh is metabolised extraneuronally by the enzyme acetylcholinesterase, to reform precursor choline and acetate. Blocking its activity with various anticholinesterases has been widely investigated and some improvement in memory noted. Such studies have invariably used reversible inhibition because of the toxicity associated with long-term irreversible inhibition of the enzyme. Physostigmine was the pilot drug. It is known to improve memory in animals and some small effects have been seen in humans (reduces number of mistakes in word-recall tests rather than number of words recalled), but it really needs to be given intravenously and has a very short half-life (30 min). 

In contrast, iproniazid, introduced in 1951 for treatment of tuberculosis, induced euphoria and was described as a psychic energiser . In fact, these patients, when given iproniazid, could become quite disruptive and this action was regarded as an undesirable side-effect However, its beneficial effects in depression were soon recognised and it was regarded as the first effective antidepressant drug. Studies of peripheral sympathetic neurons, later extended to noradrenergic neurons in the brain, showed that iproniazid irreversibly inhibits the catalytic enzyme, monoamine oxidase (MAO). Because only cytoplasmic monoamines are accessible to MAO, inhibition of this enzyme first increases the concentration of the pool of soluble transmitter but this leads to a secondary increase in the stores of vesicle-bound transmitter i.e. the pool available for impulse-evoked release (Fillenz and Stanford 1981). 

Gold and Linder (17) studied the esterase catalyzed hydrolysis of A-(-)-acetoxymethyl-(l-phenylethyl)nitrosamine. They found that the stereochemistry of 1-phenylethanol produced in the reaction was the same as that observed in the base catalyzed hydrolysis of the nitrosamine and also of N-(l-phenylethyl)nitrosocarbamate. These results indicated that the same diazotate was produced in all three reactions. The fact that no irreversible inhibition of the enzymatic hydrolysis of the nitrosamine was observed, while extensive irreversible inhibition was obtained with the nitrosocarba-mate, led these workers to conclude that the a-hydroxynitro-samine produced by the hydrolysis had sufficient stability to diffuse away from the active site of the enzyme. 

The action of most enzymes is inhibited by many substances. Inhibition is often specific, and studies of the relationship between inhibitor structure and activity have been important to the development of our concepts of active sites and of complementarity of surfaces of biomolecules. Inhibition of enzymes is also the basis of the action of a very large fraction of important drugs. Inhibition may be reversible or irreversible, the latter leading to permanent inactivation of the enzyme. Often, but not always, irreversible inhibition is preceded by reversible binding of the inhibitor at a complementary site on the enzyme surface. 

A closely related E. coli protein is a 79-kDa multifunctional enzyme that catalyzes four different reactions of fatty acid oxidation (Chapter 17). The amino-terminal region contains the enoyl hydratase activity.32 A quite different enzyme catalyzes dehydration of thioesters of (3-hydroxyacids such as 3-hydroxydecanoyl-acyl carrier protein (see Eq. 21-2) to both form and isomerize enoyl-ACP derivatives during synthesis of unsaturated fatty acids by E. coli. Again, a glutamate side chain is the catalytic base but an imidazole group of histidine has also been implicated.33 This enzyme is inhibited irreversibly by the N-acetylcysteamine thioester of 3-decynoic acids (Eq. 13-8). This was one of the first enzyme-activated inhibitors to be studied.34... 

The preceding experiments prove that there is an intermediate on the reaction pathway in each case, the measured rate constants for the formation and decay of the intermediate are at least as high as the value of kcat for the hydrolysis of the ester in the steady state. They do not, however, prove what the intermediate is. The evidence for covalent modification of Ser-195 of the enzyme stems from the early experiments on the irreversible inhibition of the enzyme by organo-phosphates such as diisopropyl fluorophosphate the inhibited protein was subjected to partial hydrolysis, and the peptide containing the phosphate ester was isolated and shown to be esterified on Ser-195.1516 The ultimate characterization of acylenzymes has come from x-ray diffraction studies of nonspecific acylenzymes at low pH, where they are stable (e.g., indolylacryloyl-chymotrypsin),17 and of specific acylenzymes at subzero temperatures and at low pH.18 When stable solutions of acylenzymes are restored to conditions under which they are unstable, they are found to react at the required rate. These experiments thus prove that the acylenzyme does occur on the reaction pathway. They do not rule out, however, the possibility that there are further intermediates. For example, they do not rule out an initial acylation on His-57 followed by rapid intramolecular transfer. Evidence concerning this and any other hypothetical intermediates must come from additional kinetic experiments and examination of the crystal structure of the enzyme. 

Another interesting point explored in detail by Wedler and Horn 87) is that the apparent binding constant of methionine sulfoximine for the irreversible inhibition is 100 jxM compared to 1.5 fiM for direct binding to the enzyme. This leads to speculation that perhaps methionine sulfoximine can bind to the enzyme in two conformations one for competitive binding that does not lead to irreversible inhibition, while another conformer binds in a different manner, producing the irreversible inhibition. The proposal from computer modeling studies of Gass and Meister 104) is that one conformation is responsible for both, but recent data open the door for further study and speculation. 

Reversible inhibition occurs rapidly in a system which is near its equilibrium point and its extent is dependent on the concentration of enzyme, inhibitor and substrate. It remains constant over the period when the initial reaction velocity studies are performed. In contrast, irreversible inhibition may increase with time. In simple single-substrate enzyme-catalysed reactions there are three main types of inhibition patterns involving reactions following the Michaelis-Menten equation competitive, uncompetitive and non-competitive inhibition. Competitive inhibition occurs when the inhibitor directly competes with the substrate in forming the enzyme complex. Uncompetitive inhibition involves the interaction of the inhibitor with only the enzyme-substrate complex, while non-competitive inhibition occurs when the inhibitor binds to either the enzyme or the enzyme-substrate complex without affecting the binding of the substrate. The kinetic modifications of the Michaelis-Menten equation associated with the various types of inhibition are shown below. The derivation of these equations is shown in Appendix S.S. 

Studies in recent years have revealed a number of remarkable drug interactions with irreversible or mechanism-based inhibitors of CYP3A, many of which can be attributed to inhibition of sequential intestinal and hepatic first-pass metabolism. Mechanism-based inhibition involves the metabolism of an inhibitor to a reactive metabolite, which either forms a slowly reversible metabolic-intermediate (MI) complex with the heme moiety or inactivates the enzyme irreversibly via covalent binding to the enzyme catalyzing the last step in the bioactivation sequence. As a result, mechanism-based inhibition is both... 

In the early 1970s it was discovered that P-450 cytochromes are irreversibly inhibited during the metabolism of xenobiotics (1). The formation of a modified heme prosthetic group is associated with enzyme inhibition and subsequent studies have identified these modified complexes as N-alkylated protoporphyrin-IX (2). The chemistry of N-sub-stituted porphyrins was comprehensively reviewed by Lavallee in 1987 (3). Since that time, there have been many significant contributions to this field by several groups. The goal of this chapter is to summarize some of this work as it relates to the mechanism of formation and reactivity of iron N-alkyl porphyrins. Biomimetic model complexes have played an important role in elucidating the chemistry of N-alkyl hemes in much the same way that synthetic iron tetraarylporphyrins have aided... 

As noted in Chapters 4, 5, and 7, compounds aimed at dismpting tyrosine kinases have been intensively studied as potential antitumor compounds. The quinoline-based inhibitor pelitinib (45) incorporates a Michael acceptor function in the side chain that can form a covalent bond with a nucleophile on the target enzyme. Such an interaction would result in irreversible inhibition of the target kinase. Reaction of the aniline (37) with DMF acetal leads to the addition of a carbon atom to aniline nitrogen in the form of an amidine (38). This intermediate is next reacted with nitric in acetic acid to form the nitrated product... 

Gmhic, Z., Sketelj, J., Klinar, B., Brzin, M. (1981). Recovery of acetylcholinesterase in the diaphragm, brain, and plasma of the rat after irreversible inhibition by soman a study of cyto-chemical localization and molecular forms of the enzyme in the motor end plate. J. Neurochem. 37 909-16. 

It is possible that the schizophrenic episode which followed our experiment may have resulted from an irreversible inhibition of MAO. Some MAO inhibitors used therapeutically as antidepressants (notably iproniazid) can bind irreversibly to the enzyme, triggering a long-term inhibition that can only be mitigated through the production of new enzymes by protein synthesis. Studies of irreversible inhibition have shown that full recovery of normal MAO activity can require a period of ten to twenty days (Planz et al. 1972). While harmine and its analogs are known to exhibit strong MAO inhibition, this action is reversible and is on the order of... 

Enzyme inhibition data are often presented as IC50, the concentration of the inhibitor to cause 50 percent inhibition at one chosen substrate concentration Kt, the inhibition constant (dissociation constant from the inhibitor-enzyme complex) determined by enzyme kinetic analysis (e.g., Dixon plot) and /Cin lcl, the time-dependent inhibition constant for mechanism-based inhibitors. IC50 values can be estimated from the study described earlier. A positive inhibition, defined as dose-dependent inhibition, with the inhibited activity lower than 50 percent of that of the negative control, will require further experimentation to define Ki for a better evaluation of in vivo inhibitory potential. Further, a study to determine Klwul may be performed to evaluate if the inhibitor acts via covalent binding to the active site of the enzyme, leading to time-dependent irreversible inhibition. 

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