High-throughput screening for enzyme inhibitors using frontal affinity chromatography with liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry

This work presents new frontal affinity chromatography (FAC) methodologies for high-throughput screening of compound libraries, designed to increase screening rates and improve sensitivity and ruggedness in performance. A FAC column constructed around the enzyme N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase V (GnT-V) was implemented in the identification of potential enzyme inhibitors from two libraries of trisaccharides. Effluent from the FAC column was fractionated, sequentially processed via LC/MS, and referenced to a similar analysis through a control FAC column lacking the enzyme. The resulting multidimensional data sets were compared across corresponding sample and control fractions to identify binders, in a semiautomated approach. A strong binder in the protonated form at m/z 795 was identified from the first library of 81 compounds, exhibiting an estimated K-d value of 0.3 mu M. Other binders yielded K-d values ranging from 0.35 to 3.35,mu M. To demonstrate. the improvement in performance of this FAC-LC/MS approach over the conventional online FAC/MS approach, 15 compounds from this library were blended with a second library of 1000 synthetic trisaccharides and screened against GnT-V. All ligands in the 15-compound set were identified in this larger screen, and no ligands of greater affinity than compound 1 were found. Our results show that FAC-LC/MS is a reliable method for screening large compound libraries directly and useful for large-scale ligand discovery initiatives.