Structure-activity relationship study of small-molecule inhibitor of Atg12-Atg3 protein-protein interaction.

Autophagy is a catabolic process that was described to play a critical role in advanced stages of cancer, wherein it maintains tumor cell homeostasis and growth by supplying nutrients. Autophagy is also described to support alternative cellular trafficking pathways, providing a non-canonical autophagy-dependent inflammatory cytokine secretion mechanism. Therefore, autophagy inhibitors have high potential in the treatment of cancer and acute inflammation. In our study, we identified compound 1 as an inhibitor of the ATG12-ATG3 protein-protein interaction. We focused on the systematic modification of the original hit 1, a casein kinase 2 (CK2) inhibitor, to find potent disruptors of ATG12-ATG3 protein-protein interaction. A systematic modification of the hit structure led us to a wide plethora of compounds that maintain its ATG12-ATG3 inhibitory activity, which could act as a viable starting point to design new compounds with diverse therapeutic applications.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Adi Kimchi reports financial support was provided by YEDA Technology Transfer. Radim Nencka reports financial support was provided by Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry Czech Academy of Sciences. Adi Kimchi has patent #WO2023126951 issued to YEDA Technology Transfer; IOCB CAS. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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