From Molecules to Therapies
From Molecules to Therapies
MCHM3x01 Semester 1,
From Molecules to Therapies
MCHM 3001 and 3901, Semester 1, 2023
Tutorial Exercise 1, week 7
Content covered: Lectures 1–11 (excluding Lecture 12 from week 7)
Work in pairs, consider each question, respond in empty fields, and volunteer your answers!
Q1. “Personalised medicine” is an approach to fine-tune therapeutics to disease states in
individuals.
a) What factors are relevant when attempting to develop “personalised medicine”?
b) Which methods do we employ to target each of those factors and
c) What is “integrative and Personalised Omics Profiling”?
d) Do you think that drug discovery research moves towards developing drugs that
mostly address a personalised medicine approach?
Q2. Mass spectrometry (MS) allows us to identify (and quantify) proteins from different
biological sources. The entirety of proteins mapped by MS is collated in the databases such
as the Human Protein Atlas. In order to identify a protein by MS we typically digest the
proteins enzymatically and analyse the fragments.
a) Why is it better to work on peptides than on native proteins?
b) What is Trypsin, what is its biological function and how do we make us of it in MS?
Q3. Explain the differences between occupancy-driven and event-driven pharmacology.
A) Omic profile of cell tissues, body fluids, and body surface and waste. All omes, age, gender,
temporal
B) Whole genome/transcriptome sequencing, (untargeted) proteome profiling, metabolome
profiling... L2 Page 29.
C) Collect L2 page 26 date together
D) Expensivie so slow
Occupancy: for targets which have high affinity binding sites (active sites).
Event: for targets which can’t be effectively inhibited by small molecules. Need PPI.
MCHM3x01 Semester 1, 2023 p. 2
Q4. Proteolysis targeting chimera therapies are on the rise and offer a novel way of
therapies.
a) Explain the mechanism behind PROTACs and
b) highlight some difficulties during PROTAC development.
Q5. C004019 is a PROTAC designed to target the intracellular hyperphosphorylated tau
(pTAU) and pTAU aggregates to treat tauopathies, such as Alzheimer’s disease. nTRD224 is
a ligand that was found to bind TDP-43, a major disease protein for ALS, that forms
neurotoxic protein aggregates also.
a) Describe for each drug if their effect occurs through occupancy-driven
pharmacology or event-driven pharmacology?
b) Using your knowledge of PROTAC design, explain how you would modify DT2216 to
target BCL-2.
Q6. Drug discovery and development doesn’t only rely on small molecule therapeutics but
makes use of peptide or protein and nucleic acid structures to find new therapeutics.
a) Explain how RNA can be used as therapies and give an example for each category
and
b) explain the pros and cons of mRNA modalities.
N
O
O
O
HN
CF3
N
OH
nTRD22
Molecular Weight: 413.40
A) Don’t need inhibit, just need binds with target, so don’t need large molecule. POI ligand (VHI,
Cereblon) MoA: L5 Page 16.
B) First E3 binding moieties not small molecule – peptidic agents – limited cellular uptake. Now
~1000 Da but potent and display in vivo activity. Dosing convenience and better biodistribution
because small(er) molecules.
Conformational requirement, avoid hook effect.
Big (500-1000 D), ont compliant with Ro5
A) Event-driven, occu
B)
MCHM3x01 Semester 1, 2023 p. 3
Q7. In vitro cell-based assays were historically performed in 2D models. More recently, 3D
models, including organoids, are being employed more widely.
a) What are the main differences between 2D and 3D models, and
b) Which assay type would you recommend for testing a library of small molecules
against a disease-relevant receptor in order to identify the most potent inhibitor?
Q8. Protein display methods can be used to display anything from peptides to whole
antibodies. You have learnt about cyclic peptide display for massive parallel screening and
phage display of e.g., Fabs in antibody development. Explain the process of “biopanning”
and why it allows to screen a large chemical space in a parallel rather than a linear
approach.
A) L6 Page 5
ASOs: block start of translation, or tag mRNA for degradation, or alter splicing (e.g. “exon
skipping”)
siRNA/miRNA: Important roles in gene regulation and innate defense against viruses through
gene silencing at the post-transcriptional level by targeting mRNA