Contact

  • Academic
    xijun@stanford.edu
    University - Student Department: Chemistry Position: Graduate

Additional Info

  • Mail Code: 5080

All Publications

  • Proteomics-Based Discovery of First-in-Class Chemical Probes for Programmed Cell Death Protein 2 (PDCD2). Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) Ji, W., Byun, W. S., Lu, W., Zhu, X., Donovan, K. A., Dwyer, B., Che, J., Yuan, L., Abulaiti, X., Corsello, S. M., Fischer, E. S., Zhang, T., Gray, N. S. 2023: e202308292

    Abstract

    Chemical probes are essential tools for understanding biological systems and for credentialing potential biomedical targets. Programmed cell death 2 (PDCD2) is a member of the B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2) family of proteins, which are critical regulators of apoptosis. Here we report the discovery and characterization of 10e, a first-in-class small molecule degrader of PDCD2. We discovered PDCD2 degrader by serendipity using a chemical proteomics approach in contrast to the conventional approach for making bivalent degraders starting from a known binding ligand targeting the protein of interest. Using 10e as a pharmacological probe, we demonstrate that PDCD2 functions as a critical regulator of cell growth by modulating the progression of the cell cycle in T lymphoblasts. Our work provides a useful pharmacological probe for investigating PDCD2 function and highlights using chemical proteomics to discover selective small molecule degraders of unanticipated targets.

    View details for DOI 10.1002/anie.202308292

    View details for PubMedID 37658265

  • Structure-Based Design of Y-Shaped Covalent TEAD Inhibitors. Journal of medicinal chemistry Lu, W., Fan, M., Ji, W., Tse, J., You, I., Ficarro, S. B., Tavares, I., Che, J., Kim, A. Y., Zhu, X., Boghossian, A., Rees, M. G., Ronan, M. M., Roth, J. A., Hinshaw, S. M., Nabet, B., Corsello, S. M., Kwiatkowski, N., Marto, J. A., Zhang, T., Gray, N. S. 2023

    Abstract

    Transcriptional enhanced associate domain (TEAD) proteins together with their transcriptional coactivator yes-associated protein (YAP) and transcriptional coactivator with the PDZ-binding motif (TAZ) are important transcription factors and cofactors that regulate gene expression in the Hippo pathway. In mammals, the TEAD families have four homologues: TEAD1 (TEF-1), TEAD2 (TEF-4), TEAD3 (TEF-5), and TEAD4 (TEF-3). Aberrant expression and hyperactivation of TEAD/YAP signaling have been implicated in a variety of malignancies. Recently, TEADs were recognized as being palmitoylated in cells, and the lipophilic palmitate pocket has been successfully targeted by both covalent and noncovalent ligands. In this report, we present the medicinal chemistry effort to develop MYF-03-176 (compound 22) as a selective, cysteine-covalent TEAD inhibitor. MYF-03-176 (compound 22) significantly inhibits TEAD-regulated gene expression and proliferation of the cell lines with TEAD dependence including those derived from mesothelioma and liposarcoma.

    View details for DOI 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.2c01548

    View details for PubMedID 36946421