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Huntington's disease is a progressive and lethal neurodegenerative disease caused by an increased CAG repeat mutation in exon 1 of the huntingtin gene (mutant huntingtin). Current drug treatments provide only limited symptomatic relief without impacting disease progression. Previous studies in our lab and others identified the abnormal binding of mutant huntingtin protein with calmodulin, a key regulator of calcium signaling. Disrupting the abnormal binding of mutant huntingtin to calmodulin reduces perturbations caused by mutant huntingtin in cell and mouse models of Huntington's disease and importantly normalizes receptor-stimulated calcium release. Using a series of high-throughput

The aberrant protein-protein interaction between calmodulin and mutant huntingtin protein in Huntington's disease patients has been found to contribute to Huntington's disease progression. A high-throughput screen for small molecules capable of disrupting this interaction revealed a sultam series as potent small-molecule disruptors. Diversification of the sultam scaffold afforded a set of 24 analogs or further evaluation. Several structure-activity trends within the analog set were found, most notably a negligible effect of absolute stereochemistry and a strong beneficial correlation with electron-withdrawing aromatic substituents. The most promising analogs were profiled for off-target effects at relevant kinases and, ultimately, one candidate molecule was evaluated for neuroprotection in a neuronal cell model of Huntington's disease.

Hdac3 is a key target for Hdac inhibitors that are efficacious in cutaneous T cell lymphoma. Moreover, the regulation of chromatin structure is critical as thymocytes transition from an immature cell with open chromatin to a mature T cell with tightly condensed chromatin. To define the phenotypes controlled by Hdac3 during T cell development, we conditionally deleted Hdac3 using the Lck-Cre transgene. This strategy inactivated Hdac3 in the double-negative stages of thymocyte development and caused a significant impairment at the CD8 immature single-positive (ISP) stage and the CD4/CD8 double-positive stage, with few mature CD4(+) or CD8(+) single-positive cells being produced. When Hdac3(-/-) mice were crossed with Bcl-xL-, Bcl2-, or TCRβ-expressing transgenic mice, a modest level of complementation was found. However, when the null mice were crossed with mice expressing a fully rearranged T cell receptor αβ transgene, normal levels of CD4 single-positive cells were produced. Thus, Hdac3 is required for the efficient transit from double-negative stage 4 through positive selection.