Head-to-tail cyclization of a heptapeptide eliminates its cytotoxicity and significantly increases its inhibition effect on amyloid β-protein fibrillation and cytotoxicity

Abstract

Amyloid-β (Aβ) protein aggregation is the main hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Inhibition of Aβ fibrillation is thus a promising therapeutic approach to the prevention and treatment of AD. Recently, we designed a heptapeptide inhibitor, LVFFARK (LK7). LK7 shows a promising inhibitory capability on Aβ fibrillation, but is prone to self-assembling and displays high cytotoxicity, which would hinder its practical application. Herein, we modified LK7 by a head-to-tail cyclization and obtained a cyclic LK7 (cLK7). cLK7 exhibits a different self-assembly behavior from LK7, and has higher stability against proteolysis than LK7 and little cytotoxicity to SH-SY5Y cells. Thermodynamic analysis revealed that both LK7 and cLK7 could bind to Aβ₄₀ by electrostatic interactions, hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic interactions, but the binding affinity of cLK7 for Aβ₄₀ (K_D = 4.96 µmol/L) is six times higher than that of LK7 (K_D = 32.2 µmol/L). The strong binding enables cLK7 to stabilize the secondary structure of Aβ₄₀ and potently inhibit its nucleation, fibrillation and cytotoxicity at extensive concentration range, whereas LK7 could only moderately inhibit Aβ₄₀ fibrillation and cytotoxicity at low concentrations. The findings indicate that the peptide cyclization is a promising approach to enhance the performance of peptide-based amyloid inhibitors.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Alzheimer’s disease / amyloid β-protein / cyclic peptide / inhibition / protein aggregation

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 21376172, 21406160, 21528601 and 21621004) and the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin from Tianjin Municipal Science and Technology Commission (Contract No. 16JCZDJC32300).

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11705-017-1687-2 and is accessible for authorized users.

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