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  • Secreted factors induced by PKC modulators do not indirectly cause HIV latency reversal. Virology Moran, J. A., Ranjan, A., Hourani, R., Kim, J. T., Wender, P. A., Zack, J. A., Marsden, M. D. 2023; 581: 8-14

    Abstract

    HIV can establish a long-lived latent infection in cells harboring integrated non-expressing proviruses. Latency reversing agents (LRAs), including protein kinase C (PKC) modulators, can induce expression of latent HIV, thereby reducing the latent reservoir in animal models. However, PKC modulators such as bryostatin-1 also cause cytokine upregulation in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), including cytokines that might independently reverse HIV latency. To determine whether cytokines induced by PKC modulators contribute to latency reversal, primary human PBMCs were treated with bryostatin-1 or the bryostatin analog SUW133, a superior LRA, and supernatant was collected. As anticipated, LRA-treated cell supernatant contained increased levels of cytokines compared to untreated cell supernatant. However, exposure of latently-infected cells with this supernatant did not result in latency reactivation. These results indicate that PKC modulators do not have significant indirect effects on HIV latency reversal in vitro and thus are targeted in their latency reversing ability.

    View details for DOI 10.1016/j.virol.2023.02.009

    View details for PubMedID 36842270

  • Studies of Catalyst-Controlled Regioselective Acetalization and Its Application to Single-Pot Synthesis of Differentially Protected Saccharides. Journal of the American Chemical Society Wang, S., Zhelavskyi, O., Lee, J., Arguelles, A. J., Khomutnyk, Y. Y., Mensah, E., Guo, H., Hourani, R., Zimmerman, P. M., Nagorny, P. 2021

    Abstract

    This article describes studies on the regioselective acetal protection of monosaccharide-based diols using chiral phosphoric acids (CPAs) and their immobilized polymeric variants, (R)-Ad-TRIP-PS and (S)-SPINOL-PS, as the catalysts. These catalyst-controlled regioselective acetalizations were found to proceed with high regioselectivities (up to >25:1 rr) on various d-glucose-, d-galactose-, d-mannose-, and l-fucose-derived 1,2-diols and could be carried out in a regiodivergent fashion depending on the choice of chiral catalyst. The polymeric catalysts were conveniently recycled and reused multiple times for gram-scale functionalizations with catalytic loadings as low as 0.1 mol %, and their performance was often found to be superior to the performance of their monomeric variants. These regioselective CPA-catalyzed acetalizations were successfully combined with common hydroxyl group functionalizations as single-pot telescoped procedures to produce 32 regioisomerically pure differentially protected mono- and disaccharide derivatives. To further demonstrate the utility of the polymeric catalysts, the same batch of (R)-Ad-TRIP-PS catalyst was recycled and reused to accomplish single-pot gram-scale syntheses of 6 differentially protected d-glucose derivatives. The subsequent exploration of the reaction mechanism using NMR studies of deuterated and nondeuterated substrates revealed that low-temperature acetalizations happen via a syn-addition mechanism and that the reaction regioselectivity exhibits strong dependence on the temperature. The computational studies indicate a complex temperature-dependent interplay of two reaction mechanisms, one involving an anomeric phosphate intermediate and another via concerted asynchronous formation of an acetal, that results in syn-addition products. The computational models also explain the steric factors responsible for the observed C2 selectivities and are consistent with experimentally observed selectivity trends.

    View details for DOI 10.1021/jacs.1c08448

    View details for PubMedID 34705439