Discovery of tricyclic indoles that potently inhibit mcl-1 using fragment-based methods and structure-based design.
Burke, J.P., Bian, Z., Shaw, S., Zhao, B., Goodwin, C.M., Belmar, J., Browning, C.F., Vigil, D., Friberg, A., Camper, D.V., Rossanese, O.W., Lee, T., Olejniczak, E.T., Fesik, S.W.(2015) J Med Chem 58: 3794-3805
- PubMed: 25844895 
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/jm501984f
- Primary Citation of Related Structures:  
4ZBF, 4ZBI - PubMed Abstract: 
Myeloid cell leukemia-1 (Mcl-1) is an antiapoptotic member of the Bcl-2 family of proteins that is overexpressed and amplified in many cancers. Overexpression of Mcl-1 allows cancer cells to evade apoptosis and contributes to the resistance of cancer cells to be effectively treated with various chemotherapies. From an NMR-based screen of a large fragment library, several distinct chemical scaffolds that bind to Mcl-1 were discovered. Here, we describe the discovery of potent tricyclic 2-indole carboxylic acid inhibitors that exhibit single digit nanomolar binding affinity to Mcl-1 and greater than 1700-fold selectivity over Bcl-xL and greater than 100-fold selectivity over Bcl-2. X-ray structures of these compounds when complexed to Mcl-1 provide detailed information on how these small-molecules bind to the target, which was used to guide compound optimization.
Organizational Affiliation: 
Department of Biochemistry, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, 2215 Garland Avenue, 607 Light Hall, Nashville, Tennessee 37232-0146, United States.