Tomonori Tamura

Chemical modification of proteins provides powerful tools to realize a broad range of exciting biological applications, including the development of new classes of biopharmaceuticals and functional studies of individual proteins in complex biological systems. Numerous strategies for linking desired chemical probes with target proteins have been developed in the last two decades, with most exploiting genetic protein engineering and/or bio-orthogonal chemistry that utilizes unnatural amino acids i

Selective modification of native proteins in live cells is one of the central challenges in recent chemical biology. As a unique bioorthogonal approach, ligand-directed chemistry recently emerged, but the slow kinetics limits its scope. Here we successfully overcome this obstacle using N-acyl-N-alkyl sulfonamide as a reactive group. Quantitative kinetic analyses reveal that ligand-directed N-acyl-N-alkyl sulfonamide chemistry allows for rapid modification of a lysine residue proximal to the liga

Protein-based fluorescent biosensors have emerged as key bioanalytical tools to visualize and quantify a wide range of biological substances and events in vitro, in cells, and even in vivo. On the basis of the construction method, the protein-based fluorescent biosensors can be principally classified into two classes: (1) genetically encoded fluorescent biosensors harnessing fluorescent proteins (FPs) and (2) semisynthetic biosensors comprised of protein scaffolds and synthetic fluorophores. Rec

The ability to modify target "native" (endogenous) proteins selectively in living cells with synthetic molecules should provide powerful tools for chemical biology. To this end, we recently developed a novel protein labeling technique termed ligand-directed tosyl (LDT) chemistry. This method uses labeling reagents in which a protein ligand and a synthetic probe are connected by a tosylate ester group. We previously demonstrated its applicability to the selective chemical labeling of several nati

Introducing synthetic fluorophores into specific endogenous proteins and analyzing their function in living cells are a great challenge in chemical biology. Toward this end, we demonstrate the target-selective and site-specific fluorescent labeling of native FKBP12 (FK506-binding protein 12) in vitro and in living cells using ligand-directed tosyl (LDT) chemistry. The LDT-mediated labeling yielded a semisynthetic FKBP12 containing the Oregon green (OG) dye near the catalytic pocket. The OG-label

Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) intimately govern various biological processes and disease states and therefore have been identified as attractive therapeutic targets for small-molecule drug discovery. However, the development of highly potent inhibitors for PPIs has proven to be extremely challenging with limited clinical success stories. Herein, we report irreversible inhibitors of the human double minute 2 (HDM2)/p53 PPI, which employ a reactive <i>N</i>-acyl-<i>N</i>-alkyl sulfonamide (N

Catalyst-mediated protein modification is a powerful approach for the imaging and engineering of natural proteins. We have previously developed affinity-guided 4-dimethylaminopyridine (AGD) chemistry as an efficient protein modification method using a catalytic acyl transfer reaction. However, because of the high electrophilicity of the thioester acyl donor molecule, AGD chemistry suffers from nonspecific reactions to proteins other than the target protein in crude biological environments, such

The precise characterization of organellar proteomes is essential for deciphering a variety of cellular functions at the molecular level. We here report a photoactivatable proximity labeling method...

The covalent inhibition of a target protein has gained widespread attention in the field of drug discovery. Most of the current covalent drugs utilize the high reactivity of cysteines toward modest electrophiles. However, there is a growing need for warheads that can target lysine residues to expand the range of covalently druggable proteins and to deal with emerging proteins with mutations resistant to cysteine-targeted covalent drugs. We have recently developed an <i>N</i>-acyl-<i>N</i>-alkyl

The term "undruggable" refers to proteins or other biological targets that have been historically challenging to target with conventional drugs or therapeutic strategies because of their structural, functional, or dynamic properties. Drugging such undruggable targets is essential to develop new therapies for diseases where current treatment options are limited or nonexistent. Thus, investigating methods to achieve such drugging is an important challenge in medicinal chemistry. Among the numerous

The ability to incorporate a desired functionality into proteins of interest in a site-specific manner can provide powerful tools for investigating biological systems and creating therapeutic conjugates. However, there are not any universal methods that can be applied to all proteins, and it is thus important to explore the chemical strategy for protein modification. In this paper, we developed a new reactive peptide tag/probe pair system for site-specific covalent protein labeling. This method

Because of its critical roles in regulating cellular signal transduction, the molecular chaperone heat-shock protein 90 (Hsp90) has become a novel therapeutic target for various diseases, including cancer, inflammation, and neurological diseases. However, the lack of methods that allow us to directly evaluate the binding of small molecule ligands to intracellular Hsp90 makes the inhibitor development more difficult. Here, we report a simple cell-based assay system for the Hsp90 inhibitor in live