A series of novel anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) degraders were designed and synthesized based on proteolysis-targeting chimera (PROTAC) technology by linking two alectinib analogs (36 and 37) with pomalidomide through linkers of different lengths and types. The most promising degrader 17 possessed a high ALK-binding affinity and potent antiproliferative activity in the ALK-dependent cell lines and did not exhibit obvious cytotoxicity in ALK fusion-negative cells. More importantly, the efficacy of compound 17 in a Karpas 299 xenograft mouse model was further evaluated based on its ALK-sustained degradation ability in vivo. The reduction in tumor weight in the compound 17-treated group (10 mg/kg/day, I.V.) reached 75.82%, while alectinib reduced tumor weight by 63.82% at a dose of 20 mg/kg/day (P.O.). Taken together, our findings suggest that alectinib-based PROTACs associated with the degradation of ALK may have promising beneficial effects for treating ALK-driven malignancies. READ ARTICLE
Journal of Medicinal Chemistry DOI: 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.1c00270
Authors: Shaowen Xie, Yuan Sun, Yulin Liu, Xinnan Li, Xinuo Li, Wenyi Zhong, Feiyan Zhan, Jingjie Zhu, Hong Yao, Dong-Hua Yang, Zhe-Sheng Chen, Jinyi Xu and Shengtao Xu