Structure-inspired design of β-arrestin-biased ligands for aminergic GPCRs

John D. McCorvy, Kyle V. Butler, Brendan Kelly, Katie Rechsteiner, Joel Karpiak, Robin M. Betz, Bethany L. Kormos, Brian K. Shoichet, Ron O. Dror, Jian Jin, Bryan L. Roth

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

129 Scopus citations

Abstract

Development of biased ligands targeting G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) is a promising approach for current drug discovery. Although structure-based drug design of biased agonists remains challenging even with an abundance of GPCR crystal structures, we present an approach for translating GPCR structural data into β-arrestin-biased ligands for aminergic GPCRs. We identified specific amino acid-ligand contacts at transmembrane helix 5 (TM5) and extracellular loop 2 (EL2) responsible for Gi/o and β-arrestin signaling, respectively, and targeted those residues to develop biased ligands. For these ligands, we found that bias is conserved at other aminergic GPCRs that retain similar residues at TM5 and EL2. Our approach provides a template for generating arrestin-biased ligands by modifying predicted ligand interactions that block TM5 interactions and promote EL2 interactions. This strategy may facilitate the structure-guided design of arrestin-biased ligands at other GPCRs, including polypharmacological biased ligands.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)126-134
Number of pages9
JournalNature Chemical Biology
Volume14
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Feb 2018

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