Identifying Protein Allosteric Transitions for Drug Discovery with 1D NMR

Allosteric drugs present many advantages over orthosteric drugs and are therefore an attractive approach in drug discovery, despite being highly challenging. First, the binding of ligands in protein allosteric pockets do not ensure an allosteric effect, and second, allosteric ligands can possess diverse modes of pharmacology even within a compound family. Herein we report a new method to: 1) detect allosteric communication between protein binding sites, and 2) compare the effect of allosteric ligands on the allosteric transitions of the protein target. The method, illustrated with glycogen phosphorylase, consists of comparing 1D saturation transfer difference (STD) NMR spectra of a molecular spy (here fragments) in the absence and presence of allosteric ligands. The modification of the STD NMR spectrum of the fragment indicates whether the protein dynamics/conformations have been changed in the presence of the allosteric modulator, thereby highlighting allosteric coupling between the binding pocket of the reference compound (in this case the fragment) and the allosteric pocket.