Structure-based design and disulfide stapling of interfacial cyclic peptidic inhibitors from thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) receptor to competitively target TSLP

Human thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) is a pro-inflammatory cytokine located at the top of inflammatory cascade that makes it a promising therapeutic target in allergic asthma. The cell surface receptor of TSLP is a heterodimer consisting of a TSLP receptor (TSLPR) and an interleukin-17 receptor α (IL-7Rα). The TSLPR subunit should be first added to the free TSLP to form a TSLPR/TSLP pre-complex, which further recruits the IL-7Rα subunit to obtain the final TSLPR/IL-7Rα/TSLP complex. Previous works have been focused on targeting the IL-7Rα-binding site of TSLP. Instead, we herein reported an attempt for rational design of cyclic peptidic inhibitors to competitively disrupt the TSLPR-TSLP interaction based on their complex crystal structure by integrating dynamics simulation and energetics analysis as well as experimental assays at molecular level. An interfacial peptide segment derived from the hotspots of TSLPR that cover a specific TSLP-binding site on the TSLPR interface, which is expected to natively form a U-shaped conformation recognized by TSLP and thus compete with the cognate TSLPR for TSLP. The eS4P peptide was further stapled by a disulfide bridge between different residue pairs across its two arms, thus separately resulting in its two stapled cyclic counterparts, i.e. eS4P[189-198] and eS4P[188-200] peptides. Circular dichroism characterized that the stapling can effectively constrain the peptide into a native-like U-shpared conformation in free state, thus largely minimizing the entropy penalty upon its binding to TSLP. Affinity assays revealed that the stapling can considerably improve the peptide binding potency to TSLP by 2.9-fold and 8.3-fold at molecular level. In addition, we further demonstrated that the potent eS4P[188-200] peptide has a good selectivity for its cognate TSLP over other four noncognate cytokines IL-2, IL-7, IL-13 and IL-22 that are relevant with the TSLP. In this respect, it is considered that the disulfide-stapled cyclic peptide-mediated blockade of TLSP inflammatory cascade may be a new and promising therapeutic strategy against allergic asthma.