LY-2584702

Colorectal cancer (CRC) remains a leading cause of cancer death because of metastatic spread. LIN28B is overexpressed in 30% of CRCs and promotes metastasis, yet its mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, we genetically modified CRC cell lines to overexpress LIN28B, resulting in enhanced PI3K/AKT pathway activation and liver metastasis in mice. We developed genetically modified mouse models with constitutively active Pik3ca that form intestinal tumors progressing to liver metastases with an intact immune system, addressing the limitations of previous Pik3ca-mutant models, including long tumor latency, mixed histology, and lack of distant metastases. The PI3Kα-specific inhibitor alpelisib reduced migration and invasion in vitro and metastasis in vivo. We present a comprehensive analysis of vertical inhibition of the PI3K/AKT pathway in CRC using the FDA-approved drugs alpelisib and capivasertib (an AKT inhibitor) in combination with LY2584702 (a ribosomal protein S6 kinase inhibitor) in CRC cell lines and mouse- and patient-derived organoids. Tissue microarrays from patients with CRC verified that LIN28B and PI3K/AKT pathway activation correlate with CRC progression. These findings highlight the critical role of the LIN28B-mediated PI3K/AKT pathway in CRC metastasis, the therapeutic potential of targeted inhibition, and the promise of patient-derived organoids in precision medicine in metastatic CRC.

The 3C-like protease of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, known as the main protease (M^pro), is an attractive drug target for the treatment of coronavirus disease 2019. This study reports the discovery of novel M^pro inhibitors using several in silico techniques, including docking, molecular dynamics (MD), and fragment molecular orbital (FMO) calculations. We performed docking calculations on 5950 compounds with bioactivity, and 12 compounds were selected. An enzymatic assay was conducted, revealing that BP-1-102 exhibits significant M^pro inhibitory activity with an IC₅₀ of 11.1 μM. The identification of seed compounds from the experiments on a few compounds demonstrates the effectiveness of our docking calculations. Furthermore, the detailed analyses using MD and FMO calculations suggested an interaction mechanism in which the hydroxyl group of BP-1-102 forms a hydrogen bond with E166 of M^pro. The M^pro inhibitory activity of SH-4-54, a derivative without the aforementioned hydroxyl group, was investigated and observed to be significantly reduced, with an IC₅₀ of 81.5 μM. This result strongly supports the suggested interaction mechanism.