1. Kinome-Wide Profiling Identifies Human WNK3 as a Target of Cajanin Stilbene Acid from Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.
- Author
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Özenver N, Kadioglu O, Fu Y, and Efferth T
- Subjects
- Binding Sites, Cell Line, Tumor, Down-Regulation, Gene Expression Regulation, Enzymologic drug effects, Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic drug effects, Humans, Kaplan-Meier Estimate, Models, Molecular, Molecular Docking Simulation, Neoplasms drug therapy, Neoplasms genetics, Protein Binding, Protein Conformation, Protein Kinases analysis, Protein Serine-Threonine Kinases chemistry, Salicylates chemistry, Stilbenes chemistry, Survival Analysis, Cajanus chemistry, Neoplasms mortality, Protein Serine-Threonine Kinases genetics, Protein Serine-Threonine Kinases metabolism, Salicylates pharmacology, Stilbenes pharmacology
- Abstract
Pigeon Pea ( Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.) is a common food crop used in many parts of the world for nutritional purposes. One of its chemical constituents is cajanin stilbene acid (CSA), which exerts anticancer activity in vitro and in vivo. In an effort to identify molecular targets of CSA, we performed a kinome-wide approach based on the measurement of the enzymatic activities of 252 human kinases. The serine-threonine kinase WNK3 (also known as protein kinase lysine-deficient 3) was identified as the most promising target of CSA with the strongest enzymatic activity inhibition in vitro and the highest binding affinity in molecular docking in silico. The lowest binding affinity and the predicted binding constant pKi of CSA (-9.65 kcal/mol and 0.084 µM) were comparable or even better than those of the known WNK3 inhibitor PP-121 (-9.42 kcal/mol and 0.123 µM). The statistically significant association between WNK3 mRNA expression and cellular responsiveness to several clinically established anticancer drugs in a panel of 60 tumor cell lines and the prognostic value of WNK3 mRNA expression in sarcoma biopsies for the survival time of 230 patients can be taken as clues that CSA-based inhibition of WNK3 may improve treatment outcomes of cancer patients and that CSA may serve as a valuable supplement to the currently used combination therapy protocols in oncology.
- Published
- 2022
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