Translating in vitro ligand bias into in vivo efficacy

It is increasingly apparent that ligand structure influences both the efficiency with which G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) engage their downstream effectors and the manner in which they are activated. Thus, 'biased' agonists, synthetic ligands whose intrinsic efficacy differs from the native ligand, afford a strategy for manipulating GPCR signaling in ways that promote beneficial signals while blocking potentially deleterious ones. Still, there are significant challenges in relating in vitro ligand efficacy, which is typically measured in heterologous expression systems, to the biological response in vivo, where the ligand is acting on natively expressed receptors and in the presence of the endogenous ligand. This is particularly true of arrestin pathway-selective 'biased' agonists. The type 1 parathyroid hormone receptor (PTH₁R) is a case in point. Parathyroid hormone (PTH) is the principal physiological regulator of calcium homeostasis, and PTH₁R expressed on cells of the osteoblast lineage are an established therapeutic target in osteoporosis. In vitro, PTH₁R signaling is highly sensitive to ligand structure, and PTH analogs that affect the selectivity/kinetics of G protein coupling or that engage arrestin-dependent signaling mechanisms without activating heterotrimeric G proteins have been identified. In vivo, intermittent administration of conventional PTH analogs accelerates the rate of osteoblastic bone formation, largely through known cAMP-dependent mechanisms. Paradoxically, both intermittent and continuous administration of an arrestin pathway-selective PTH analog, which in vivo would be expected to antagonize endogenous PTH₁R-cAMP signaling, also increases bone mass. Transcriptomic analysis of tissue from treated animals suggests that conventional and arrestin pathway-selective PTH1R ligands act in largely different ways, with the latter principally affecting pathways involved in the regulation of cell cycle, survival, and migration/cytoskeletal dynamics. Such multi-dimensional in vitro and in vivo analyses of ligand bias may provide insights into the physiological roles of non-canonical arrestin-mediated signaling pathways in vivo, and provide a conceptual framework for translating arrestin pathway-selective ligands into viable therapeutics.