title: The first structure-activity relationship studies for designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs.
abstract: Over the past decade, two independent technologies have emerged and been widely adopted by the neuroscience community for remotely controlling neuronal activity: optogenetics which utilize engineered channelrhodopsin and other opsins, and chemogenetics which utilize engineered G protein-coupled receptors (Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs (DREADDs)) and other orthologous ligand-receptor pairs. Using directed molecular evolution, two types of DREADDs derived from human muscarinic acetylcholine receptors have been developed: hM3Dq which activates neuronal firing, and hM4Di which inhibits neuronal firing. Importantly, these DREADDs were not activated by the native ligand acetylcholine (ACh), but selectively activated by clozapine N-oxide (CNO), a pharmacologically inert ligand. CNO has been used extensively in rodent models to activate DREADDs, and although CNO is not subject to significant metabolic transformation in mice, a small fraction of CNO is apparently metabolized to clozapine in humans and guinea pigs, lessening the translational potential of DREADDs. To effectively translate the DREADD technology, the next generation of DREADD agonists are needed and a thorough understanding of structure-activity relationships (SARs) of DREADDs is required for developing such ligands. We therefore conducted the first SAR studies of hM3Dq. We explored multiple regions of the scaffold represented by CNO, identified interesting SAR trends, and discovered several compounds that are very potent hM3Dq agonists but do not activate the native human M3 receptor (hM3). We also discovered that the approved drug perlapine is a novel hM3Dq agonist with >10 000-fold selectivity for hM3Dq over hM3.
authors.affiliation: †Departments of Structural and Chemical Biology, Oncological Sciences, and Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York 10029, United States.
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: ‡National Institute of Mental Health - Psychoactive Drug Screening Program, Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, United States.|§Center for Neuro-Medicine, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul 136-791, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Hyunah
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Choo
authors.affiliation: ‡National Institute of Mental Health - Psychoactive Drug Screening Program, Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, United States.
authors.forename: Xi-Ping
authors.initials: XP
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: †Departments of Structural and Chemical Biology, Oncological Sciences, and Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York 10029, United States.
authors.forename: Xiaobao
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: ‡National Institute of Mental Health - Psychoactive Drug Screening Program, Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, United States.
authors.forename: Orrin
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Stone
authors.affiliation: ‡National Institute of Mental Health - Psychoactive Drug Screening Program, Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, United States.
authors.forename: Bryan L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Roth
authors.affiliation: †Departments of Structural and Chemical Biology, Oncological Sciences, and Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York 10029, United States.
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Jin
mesh_terms: D000109:Acetylcholine / Q000494:pharmacology; D000818:Animals; D018679:Cholinergic Agonists / Q000494:pharmacology; D003024:Clozapine / Q000031:analogs & derivatives / Q000494:pharmacology; D015198:Designer Drugs; D003984:Dibenzazepines / Q000494:pharmacology; D006801:Humans; D008024:Ligands; D043587:Receptor, Muscarinic M3 / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000187:drug effects*; D012702:Serotonin Antagonists / Q000494:pharmacology; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000187:drug effects; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship
chemical_list: D018679:Cholinergic Agonists; D015198:Designer Drugs; D003984:Dibenzazepines; D008024:Ligands; D043587:Receptor, Muscarinic M3; D012702:Serotonin Antagonists; C003910:perlapine; D003024:Clozapine; C079149:clozapine N-oxide; D000109:Acetylcholine
keywords: CNO; DREADD; SAR; hM3Dq; neuronal activation; perlapine