Design and synthesis of new integrase inhibitors

Abstract

The viral enzyme integrase (IN) is essential for the replication of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) and represents an important target for the development of new antiretroviral drugs. In this PhD project, we focused on the N-terminal domain of integrase (NTD) for the development and synthesis of a library of overlapping peptide sequences, with specific length and specific offset covering the entire native protein sequence NTD IN 1-50. The most potent fragment, VVAKEIVAH (peptide 18), inhibits the HIV-1 IN activity with an IC50 value of 4.5 μM. Amino acid substitution analysis on this peptide revealed essential residues for activity and allowed us to identify two nonapeptides (peptides 24 and 25), that show a potency of inhibition similar to peptide 18. Interestingly, peptide 18 does not interfere with the dynamic interplay between IN subunits, while peptides 24 and 25 modulate these interactions in different manners. In fact, peptide 24 inhibits the IN-IN dimerization, while peptide 25 promotes IN multimerization, with IC50 values of 32 and 4.8 μM, respectively. In addition, peptide 25 has shown to have selective anti-infective cell activity for HIV-1. Moreover, the NMR analysis showed an alpha helix conformation of peptide 25, which could be essential for the interaction with IN. These results indicated peptide 25 as a hit for further development of new chemotherapeutic agents against HIV-1. In addition, we observed that the peptide 5, EKYHSNWRAM, conveniently conjugated with the cell-penetrating fragment TAT, inhibits replication of HIV-1 and HIV-2 in infected MT-4 cells. [edited by author]