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Record W4407900792 · doi:10.1038/s41467-025-57005-3

Potent and selective SETDB1 covalent negative allosteric modulator reduces methyltransferase activity in cells

2025· article· en· W4407900792 on OpenAlexafffund
Mélanie Uguen, Devan J. Shell, Madhushika Silva, Yu Deng, Fengling Li, Magdalena M. Szewczyk, Ka Yang, Yani Zhao, Michael A. Stashko, Jacqueline L. Norris‐Drouin, Jarod M. Waybright, Serap Beldar, Justin M. Rectenwald, Angie L. Mordant, Thomas S. Webb, Laura E. Herring, C.H. Arrowsmith, Suzanne Ackloo, Steven P. Gygi, Robert K. McGinty, Dalia Baršytė-Lovejoy, Pengda Liu, Levon Halabelian, Lindsey I. James, Kenneth H. Pearce, Stephen V. Frye

Bibliographic record

VenueNature Communications · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
TopicCancer-related gene regulation
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Toronto
FundersNational Institute of General Medical SciencesCanadian Institutes of Health ResearchGenentechOntario Genomics InstituteNational Cancer InstituteUniversity of TorontoEuropean Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and AssociationsMerck KGaANational Institutes of HealthU.S. Department of Health and Human ServicesOntario GenomicsGenome CanadaMcGill UniversityPharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America FoundationBayerPfizerNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaCanadian Light SourceBristol-Myers Squibb
KeywordsAllosteric regulationMethyltransferaseAllosteric modulatorChemistryCovalent bondEnzymeBiophysicsBiochemistryCell biologyBiologyGeneMethylation

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

A promising drug target, SETDB1, is a dual methyl-lysine (Kme) reader and methyltransferase implicated in cancer and neurodegenerative disease progression. To help understand the role of the triple Tudor domain (3TD) of SETDB1, its Kme reader, we first identify a low micromolar potency small molecule ligand, UNC6535, which occupies simultaneously both the TD2 and TD3 reader binding sites. Further optimization leads to the discovery of UNC10013, a covalent 3TD ligand targeting Cys385 of SETDB1. UNC10013 is potent with a kinact/KI of 1.0 × 106 M−1s−1 and demonstrates proteome-wide selectivity. In cells, negative allosteric modulation of SETDB1-mediated Akt methylation occurs after treatment with UNC10013. Therefore, UNC10013 is a potent, selective, and cell-active covalent ligand for the 3TD of SETDB1, demonstrating negative allosteric modulator properties and making it a promising tool to study the biological role of SETDB1 in disease progression. Design of cysteine-targeting analogs of a reversible SETDB1 triple Tudor domain (3TD) ligand, UNC6535, led to UNC10013, a potent covalent ligand with high selectivity. UNC10013 demonstrated allosteric inhibition of SETDB1-mediated Akt methylation in cells, a promising approach to SETDB1 therapeutics.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Bench or experimental · Consensus signal: Bench or experimental
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.052
Threshold uncertainty score0.531

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.008
GPT teacher head0.290
Teacher spread0.281 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designBench or experimental
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations6
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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