Document Type

Article

Original Publication Date

2011

Journal/Book/Conference Title

PLOS ONE

Volume

6

DOI of Original Publication

10.1371/journal.pone.0026367

Comments

Originally published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0026367

Date of Submission

November 2014

Abstract

The inhibition of thrombin is one of the important treatments of pathological blood clot formation. Variegin, isolated from the tropical bont tick, is a novel molecule exhibiting a unique ‘two-modes’ inhibitory property on thrombin active site (competitive before cleavage, noncompetitive after cleavage). For the better understanding of its function, we have determined the crystal structure of the human α-thrombin:synthetic-variegin complex at 2.4 Å resolution. The structure reveals a new mechanism of thrombin inhibition by disrupting the charge relay system. Based on the structure, we have designed 17 variegin variants, differing in potency, kinetics and mechanism of inhibition. The most active variant is about 70 times more potent than the FDA-approved peptidic thrombin inhibitor, hirulog-1/bivalirudin. In vivoantithrombotic effects of the variegin variants correlate well with their in vitro affinities for thrombin. Our results encourage that variegin and the variants show strong potential for the development of tunable anticoagulants.

Rights

Copyright: © 2011 Koh et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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VCU Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Publications

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