The azatryptophan-based fluorescent platform for in vitro rapid screening of inhibitors disrupting IKKβ-NEMO...

The nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) plays an important role in inflammatory and immune responses. Aberrant NF-κB signaling is implicated in multiple disorders, including cancer. Targeting the regulatory scaffold subunit IκB kinase γ (IKKγ/NEMO) as therapeutic interventions could be promising due to its specific involvement in canonical NF-κB activation without interfering with non-canonical signaling. In this study, the use of unnatural amino acid substituted IKKβ with unique photophysical activity to sense water environment changes upon interaction with NEMO provides a powerful in vitro screening platform that would greatly facilitate the identification of compounds having the potential to disrupt IKKβ-NEMO interaction, and thus specifically modulate the canonical NF-κB pathway. We then utilized a competitive binding platform to screen the binding ability of a number of potential molecules being synthesized. Our results suggest that a lead compound (-)-PDC-099 is a potent agent with ascertained potency to disrupt IKKβ-NEMO complex for modulating NF-κB canonical pathway.