Abstract

There is increasing interest in developing peptides for pharmacological intervention with pathophysiological functions of serine proteases. From phage-displayed peptide libraries, we previously isolated peptidylic inhibitors of urokinase-type plasminogen activator, a potential target for intervention with cancer invasion. The two peptides, upain-1 (CSWRGLENHRMC) and mupain-1 (CPAYSRYLDC), are competitive inhibitors of human and murine urokinase-type plasminogen activator, respectively. Both have an Arg as the P1 residue, inserting into the S1 pocket in the active site of the enzymes, but their specificity depends to a large extent on interactions outside the enzymes' active sites, so-called exosite interactions. Here, we synthesized a number of upain-1 and mupain-1 variants in which the P1 Arg was substituted with novel non-natural Arg analogs and achieved considerable improvement in the peptides' affinity to their targets. Using chimeras of human and murine uPA as well as X-ray crystallography, we delineated the relative contribution of the P1 residue and exosite interactions for the affinity and specificity of the inhibitors for their target enzyme. The effect of inserting a particular non-natural amino acid into the P1 position is determined by the fact that changes in interactions of the P1 residue in the S1 pocket leads to changed exosite interactions, and vice versa. These findings are of general interest when considering the affinities and specificities of serine protease inhibitors to be used for pharmacological intervention and could pave the way for potential drug candidates for the treatment of cancer.