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Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina (H.W., M.Y., H.K.); Biology Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York (H.R.); Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee (S.F.).
Received July 19, 2007; accepted October 24, 2007
| Abstract |
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The most successful examples of this class of drugs are the PDE5 inhibitors (Fig. 1) sildenafil (Viagra), vardenafil (Levitra), and tadalafil (Cialis), which have been used for treatment of male erectile dysfunction (Rotella et al., 2002). Sildenafil (Revatio) has also been approved for treatment of pulmonary hypertension (Galié et al., 2005
). Korean authorities have recently approved udenafil (Fig. 1) for treatment of male erectile dysfunction (Salem et al., 2006
). Although these four PDE5 inhibitors have been successfully approved as the drugs for treatment of human diseases, the enthusiasm for development of novel PDE5 inhibitors continues. PDE5 inhibitors have been shown to have potential for other medical applications, including improvement of memory and treatment of cancer and heart disease (Blokland et al., 2006
; Salem et al., 2006
; Stehlik and Movsesian, 2006
; Supuran et al., 2006
; Padma-Nathan et al., 2007
; Palmer et al., 2007
; Zhu and Strada, 2007
; Sandner et al., 2008
). Much attention has been focused on the recent development of the second generation of PDE5 inhibitors that have the same or different scaffolds from the current drugs but different pharmacokinetic profiles (Palmer et al., 2007
).
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However, the structural basis for the different potencies of these inhibitors is still puzzling. The early studies on the crystal structures of PDE5 in complex with sildenafil and vardenafil by two groups showed inconsistent results. Vardenafil and sildenafil have the same extended configuration in the crystal structures reported by Sung et al. (2003
), in contrast to the folded configuration of both inhibitors in the report by Zhang et al. (2004
). Because the PDE5A catalytic domain used by Sung et al. (2003
) is basically inactive and the structure reported by Zhang et al. (2004
) contains a chimeric replacement of the PDE5A H-loop with the PDE4D H-loop, the biologically relevant conformation of these drugs has remained a question.
To address this question, the crystal structure of the fully active and nonmutated catalytic domain of PDE5A1 in complex with vardenafil has been determined and compared with the previously published cocrystal structures of the enzyme with sildenafil and vardenafil. The structural comparison shows dramatic differences between the vardenafil and sildenafil complexes in both PDE5 protein conformation and the inhibitor configuration. These differences are likely to contribute to the different properties of these drugs.
| Materials and Methods |
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Protein Crystallization and Structure Determination. The cocrystal of PDE5A1 (535-860) with vardenafil was grown by vapor diffusion. The complex of PDE5A1-vardenafil was prepared by mixing 1 mM vardenafil with 15 mg/ml PDE5A1 at 4°C overnight. The protein drop was set up by mixing 2 µl of protein solution with 2 µl of well buffer and crystallized against a well buffer of 12% polyethylene glycol 3350, 15% glycerol, and 0.1 M sodium acetate pH 4.6 at 25°C. The PDE5A1-vardenafil crystals have the space group P212121 with cell dimensions of a = 68.9, b = 87.8, and c = 138.5 Å (Table 1). Diffraction data were collected on beamline X29 at Brookhaven National Laboratory and processed by program HKL (Otwinowski and Minor, 1997
).
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The structure of the PDE5A1-vardenafil cocrystal was solved by molecular replacement program AMoRe (Navaza and Saludjian, 1997
), using the PDE5A1-IBMX structure without the H-loop as the initial model. The atomic model was built with the use of the program O (Jones et al., 1991
) against the electron density map that was improved by the density modification package of CCP4. The structure was refined by CNS (Crystallography and NMR System) (Table 1; Brünger et al., 1998
). The atomic coordinates and structural factors have been deposited into the Protein Data Bank with accession code 3B2R.
| Results |
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-helices (Fig. 2). Most of the residues in the PDE5A1-vardenafil cocrystal had solid electron density and were traced without ambiguity. Residues 660 to 672 and 792 to 806, which are parts of the H- and M-loops, lacked electron density and were disordered. The superimposition of PDE5A1-vardenafil over other previously determined PDE5A1 structures (Huai et al., 2004
atoms of 270 comparable residues (536-657, 686-787, and 813-859) of the unliganded PDE5A1 and its complexes with IBMX, icarisid II, and sildenafil, indicating the overall similarity among the PDE5 structures. However, the PDE5A1-vardenafil structure shows dramatic conformation differences in the H- and M-loops from the known PDE5 structures.
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-helices (H8 and H9) at residues 664 to 667 and 672 to 676 in the IBMX complex, 3) a 310 helix in the sildenafil complex, and 4) two short β-strands in the icarisid II complex (Wang et al., 2006
Vardenafil Caused Loss of the Divalent Metal Binding. The most surprising feature of the PDE5A1-vardenafil structure is the absence of divalent metals at the active site (Fig. 2). This is in contrast to the absolute conservation of the binding of two divalent metal ions at the active sites of all early reported structures of PDE5 and other PDE families (Wang et al., 2006
; Ke and Wang, 2007
), even in the presence of the metal-chelating agent EDTA during the protein purification of the PDE4B2B catalytic domain (Xu et al., 2000
). Because the divalent metals and their binding residues are not involved in crystallographic lattice contacts, the loss of the divalent metals in the PDE5-vardenafil complex is unlikely to be an artifact of the crystal packing. Rather, the loss of the metal ions in the PDE5-vardenafil structure is apparently due to the influence of the conformational changes in the H-loop. A careful examination shows that two of the zinc-binding residues (His617 and Asp764) are well superimposed with those in the other PDE5 structures (Fig. 2D), as shown by small positional differences of 0.15 and 0.19 Å for their C
atoms between the structures of PDE5A1-vardenafil and PDE5A1-sildenafil. However, two other important metal-binding residues (His653 and Asp654) in the PDE5A1-vardenafil complex show shifts of 0.76 and 0.80 Å from those in the PDE5A1-sildenafil complex although their conformations are retained; the magnitudes of these shifts are almost twice the overall root-mean-square deviation of 0.47 Å for all the atoms in the structures. In addition, the positioning of His684 in the PDE5-vardenafil complex is completely different from that in the PDE5-sildenafil structure, and its imidazole ring is now located at the site normally occupied by the second metal ion or magnesium (Fig. 2D). Thus, the positional and conformational changes of Asp654 and His684 apparently act to eliminate binding of both divalent cations. Because Asp654 and His684 are located, respectively, at the N and C termini of the H-loop, the conformational change of the H-loop upon vardenafil binding seems to be the driving force that causes loss of the metals. This suggests that loss of catalytic activity in the presence of vardenafil is due to two factors: 1) direct competition between vardenafil and cGMP for access to the catalytic site and 2) vardenafil-induced loss of divalent cations from the catalytic site.
To study whether the inactive PDE5-vardenafil complex can regain the catalytic activity, the PDE5A1 catalytic domain (residues 535-860) was mixed with 1.5 mM vardenafil for 4 h and then passed through a Sephacryl S300 gel filtration column in a plain running buffer of 20 mM Tris-HCl, pH 7.5, 50 mM NaCl, and 1 mM 2-mercaptoethanol without inhibitor vardenafil. The specific activities of the native PDE5, the PDE5-vardenafil complex, and the fraction eluted from the S300 column were measured at five repeats by using a method previously described (Wang et al., 2006
) and the assay buffer of 20 mM Tris-HCl, pH 7.5, 1.5 mM dithiothreitol, 10 mM MgCl2, and 0.2 µM cGMP. They were 39.8 ± 0.6 nmol/min/mg for the native PDE5 catalytic domain, 0.09 ± 0.02 for the protein in complex with 1.5 mM vardenafil, and 2.0 ± 0.4 for the protein after passed the S300 column. Addition of 10 and 100 nM zinc to the assay buffer increased the specific activity for the protein eluted from the S300 column by approximately 2-fold (3.9 ± 1.1 and 4.4 ± 1.0 nmol/min/mg). The second time passing through the S300 column did not further increase the activity. These experiments suggest that the limited catalytic activity can be regained from the inactive PDE5-vardenafil complex by passing the gel filtration column. The small percentage (10%) of activity recovery implies the improper elution conditions or the trap of vardenafil in the closed active site.
Different Configurations of Vardenafil and Sildenafil When Bound to PDE5A1. Vardenafil directly competes with cGMP for access to the catalytic pocket of PDE5A1, as does sildenafil (Figs. 2 and 3). The binding involves three hydrogen bonds formed between O6 and N1 of imidazotriazinone of vardenafil and N
2 and O
1 of Gln817 of PDE5A1 and between a sulfonamide oxygen of vardenafil and the backbone nitrogen of Cys677 of PDE5A1. In addition, two water molecules bind to O6 and N8 of the imidazotriazinone. For hydrophobic interactions, the propyl-imidazotriazinone of vardenafil stacks against Phe820 of PDE5A1 and also contacts residues Tyr612, His613, Ile680, Leu765, Ala767, Ile768, Leu782, Phe786, and Gln817. The ethoxy group orients to a hydrophobic pocket and interacts via van der Waals forces with Ala779, Val782, Ile813, and Gln817. The phenyl group forms hydrophobic interactions with Tyr676, Met816, Gln817, and Phe820. The ether oxygen of the ethoxyphenyl group has a distance of 3.18 Å to the amide oxygen of the side chain of Gln817. This distance is an unfa-vorable interaction because both oxygen atoms have no proton for formation of a hydrogen bond and also because Gln817 is unlikely to switch its side-chain orientation because of its pre-existing hydrogen bond with Gln775. The sulfonamide group (-SO2N) of vardenafil contacts Tyr676, Cys677, and Ile680 of the H-loop, in addition to the stack against Phe820. The ethylpiperazine group orients to the surface of the binding pocket and interacts with Met816, Gly819, and Phe820.
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Vardenafil binding to PDE5 shares a number of similarities with the binding characteristics of sildenafil, including similar location of their ethoxyphenyl and imidazotriazinone/pyrazolopyrimidinone groups, the same stacking against Phe820, and the hydrogen bonds with Glu817 (Fig. 3). In addition, both inhibitors are buried in the catalytic pocket. The solvent-accessible area of the bound vardenafil is only 8%, which compares well with 9.4% of the bound sildenafil (Wang et al., 2006
). However, the bound vardenafil shows molecular configuration and interactions different from those of the bound sildenafil (Fig. 3). The key difference is the orientation of the piperazine portion of two drugs. The ethylpiperazine of vardenafil orients to the surface of the binding pocket and is extended to interact with residues of Tyr676 to Ile680. In comparison, the methylpiperazine of sildenafil folds back to its molecular entity and interacts with residues Asn662 to Ile665 of the H-loop, but not Tyr676-Ile680, via van der Waals' interactions.
| Discussion |
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Our previous studies have already shown that the H-loop of PDE5A is highly flexible and can adopt different conformations and positional locations upon binding of the inhibitors (Wang et al., 2006
). This study adds significant new structural information pertaining to the interactions between PDE5 and vardenafil. Although it is not clear whether the individual conformation of the H-loop can be exploited for design of new PDE5 inhibitors, the flexibility of the H-loop is likely to be an important allosteric mechanism that affects substrate and inhibitor binding. The isolated PDE5A1 catalytic domain showed similar binding affinity with vardenafil and sildenafil, and the vardenafil affinity is significantly boosted by the involvement of GAF-B of PDE5A1 regulatory domain (Blount et al., 2006
). This implies that the unique features associated with the interaction of each of these inhibitors with the PDE5 catalytic domain are likely to play a major role in determining the influence of the regulatory domain on inhibitor affinity. A full understanding of the molecular effects of these inhibitors will require further structural study within the context of the PDE5 holoenzyme.
It is interesting to note that the PDE4-selective inhibitor rolipram caused relocalization of the full-length PDE4A4 and was suggested to trigger a conformational change on a loop interacting with Mg2+ (Terry et al., 2003
). Besides, the binding of cAMP to the GAF domain of trypanosome PDEB1 (Laxman et al., 2005
) and cGMP to the GAF domain of human PDE5 (Zoraghi et al., 2005
) induced the allosteric conformational changes of the enzymes. These observations, together with the structural study done here, suggest that conformational changes promoted by the binding of inhibitors and substrates in the certain PDE families are essential for the regulations such as phosphorylation of PDE4 and cGMP/cAMP binding to GAF domains of PDEs. The H-loop of PDE5 likely serves as a key mediator of the allosteric regulation of enzymatic activity.
| Acknowledgements |
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| Footnotes |
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ABBREVIATIONS: PDE, cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterase; IBMX, 3-isobutyl-1-methylxanthine.
Address correspondence to: Hengming Ke, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7260. E-mail: hke{at}med.unc.edu
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