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The family with sequence similarity 20, member C (Fam20C), a Golgi casein kinase, has been recently regarded as a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). Lacking enzyme activity center has been becoming an obstacle to the development of small-molecule inhibitors of Fam20C. Herein, we combined in silico high-throughput screening with chemical synthesis methods to obtain a new small-molecule Fam20C inhibitor 3r, which exhibited desired anti-proliferative activities against MDA-MB-231 cells and also inhibited migration. Subsequently, the enzymatic assay, molecular docking, and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were carried out for validating that 3r could bind to Fam20C. In addition, 3r was found to induce apoptosis via the mitochondrial pathway in MDA-MB-231 cells as well as to inhibit cell migration. Moreover, we demonstrated that 3r inhibited tumor growth in vivo and thereby having a good therapeutic potential on TNBC. Taken together, these results suggest that 3r may be a novel Fam20C inhibitor with anti-proliferative and apoptosis-inducing activities, which would shed light on discovering more small-molecule drugs for the future TNBC therapy.

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infections affect about 240 million patients worldwide and increase the risk of liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. It is estimated that about 686 thousand people died annually of liver damage resulted from HBV infections. At present, two classes of antiviral drugs have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of hepatitis B, immunomodulators (interferon [IFN]-a and pegylated-interferon [PEG-IFN]-a) and nucleos(t)ide analogs (lamivudine, telbivudine, adefovir, tenofovir [TDF], and entecavir [ETV]). However, it still remains a daunting challenge for curing HBV, because of the low sustained response rates (20-30%) and many side effects of IFN and peg-IFN. Although nucleoside analogues are well tolerated and exhibit an early and potent antiviral effect, the selection of resistant mutants and nephrotoxicity during long-term therapy limit their use. Here, we focus on summarizing the currently approved anti-HBV drugs and characterization of novel HBV inhibitors and analysing their structures, targets, anti-HBV effects and mechanisms of action, which may shed new light on the discovery of small compounds as potential anti-HBV drugs for treatment of HBV.

Eukaryotic elongation factor 2 kinase (eEF2K) is a key α-kinase that negatively regulates the extension step of protein synthesis, which consumes most of the energy and amino acids required for protein synthesis. Studies have found that eEF2K protein is related to the breast cancer. However, existing inhibitor effect has not achieved the desired effect in cancer therapy. Proteolysis target chimeric (PROTAC) technology is uses proteasome to degrade target protein to achieve the purpose of inhibiting tumour cell growth. Here, we reported that the use of PROTAC strategy in combining with star eEF2K inhibitor A484954 and its potential derivatives. Consequently, candidate compound 11l was found to degrade eEF2K and induce apoptosis in human breast carcinoma MDA-MB-231 cells. Together, these findings demonstrate that our eEF2K-targeting PROTAC small molecule would be a potential new strategy for future breast cancer therapy.

Beginning with our previously reported ERK inhibitor BL-EI001, we found Raf1 to be an important regulator in the ERK interactive network, and then we designed and synthesized a novel series of Raf1/ERK dual inhibitors against human breast cancers through integrative computational, synthetic and biological screening methods. Moreover, we found that compound 9d suppressed the proliferation of breast cancer cell lines and induced cellular apoptosis via a mitochondrial pathway with only partial dependence on Raf1 and ERK. Our results suggest that an integrative method including in silico design, chemical synthesis, biological screening and bioinformatics analysis could be an attractive strategy for the discovery of multi-target inhibitors against breast cancer.