Pharmacological characterisation of a clinical candidate, TG-0054, a small molecule inverse agonist targeting CXCR4

Kylie S. Pan, Ziming Wang, Cy Pfeil, Nick D. Bergkamp, Simon Mobach, Susanne Roth, Aurélien Rizk, Martin j. Lohse, Paolo Annibale, Marco Siderius, Mirjam Zimmermann, Martine j. Smit, Reggie Bosma*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

CXCR4 is an important therapeutic target for hematopoietic stem cell mobilization, which enhances the success of autologous stem cell transplantation for treating blood cancers such as lymphomas and myeloma. As CXCR4 has been shown to be involved in various inflammatory diseases, cancer progression, and cell entry by the human immunodeficiency virus, understanding the molecular mechanism of CXCR4 inhibitors has potential implications in a wide area of diseases. Here, we present an exploratory study which involves the molecular pharmacological characterization of TG-0054 (burixafor, GPC-100), a clinical candidate for hematopoietic stem cell mobilization. TG-0054 inhibited CXCL12 binding at CXCR4, and antagonized both Gαi and β-arrestin2 recruitment as well as the downstream Gαi-attenuation of cAMP signaling pathway, with pIC50 of 7.7, 8.0, and 7.9, respectively. Compared with the clinically used antagonist AMD3100 and the prototypical inverse agonist Isothiourea-1t (IT1t), TG-0054 displayed a unique pharmacological profile. Like IT1t, TG-0054 inhibited the constitutive Gαi signaling of CXCR4. However, in contrast to IT1t and other reported inverse agonists, TG-0054 was not able to induce monomerization of CXCR4 oligomeric complexes. Considering the unique properties of TG-0054 on CXCR4, TG-0054 is an interesting tool compound for studying the relevance of inverse agonism as well as CXCR4 monomerization in various pathologies.
Original languageEnglish
Article number100015
Number of pages10
JournalMolecular Pharmacology
Volume107
Issue number4
Early online date28 Mar 2025
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Apr 2025

Keywords

  • cAMP
  • Chemokine receptors
  • G protein-coupled receptors
  • Signal transduction
  • CXCR4

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