LAUSR

Pharmacological inhibition of proteasomal cysteine deubiquitinase (DUB) activity (i.e., USP14 and UCHL5 DUBs) has been shown to be particularly cytotoxic to cancer cells and to result in inhibition of tumor growth in several in vivo models. Most proteasome DUB inhibitors contain α, β-unsaturated ketones with the potential to covalently bind DUB active site cysteines. We here performed a screen of 5000 compounds containing α, β-unsaturated ketones in order to identify novel proteasome DUB inhibitors and to examine the question of the specificity of such compounds. Surprisingly, only ~3% of 5000 compounds containing α, β-unsaturated ketones showed anti proliferative activity at 5 uM. Almost one third of these cytotoxic compounds were found to block proteasome processing. Treatment of cells with the hit compounds induced the accumulation of proteasome bound high molecular weight polyubiquitin conjugates, induction of the chaperone HSP70B9 and the oxidative stress marker heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) and to induce an apoptotic response. A subset of 10 compounds were studied in detail and found to inhibit proteasome DUB activity in vitro. Importantly, hit compounds did not show inhibitory activity on a panel of recombinant non-proteasome DUBs. Inhibition of proteasome processing by hit compounds was not due to inhibition of 20S proteasome enzymatic activity. Exposure of multiple myeloma cells to the hit compounds resulted in thermostabilization of USP14 at the relevant concentrations using CETSA. These results suggest that α, β-carbonyls-containing compounds are promising candidates for development of drugs targeting proteasome DUBs and that drugs showing unexpected selectivity can be identified. Citation Format: Karthik Selvaraju, Arjan Mofers, Paola Pellegrini, Ellin-Kristina Hillert, Padraig D9Arcy, Stig Linder. Screening and characterization of drugs that inhibit the ubiquitin-proteasome system [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2018; 2018 Apr 14-18; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 2795.