Mengyang Chang, Feng Gao, Giri Gnawali, Hang Xu, Yue Dong, Xiang Meng, Wenpan Li, Zhiren Wang, Byrdie Lopez, Jennifer S Carew, Steffan T Nawrocki, Jianqin Lu, Qing-Yu Zhang, Wei Wang
Although the selective and effective clearance of senescent cancer cells can improve cancer treatment, their development is confronted by many challenges. As part of efforts designed to overcome these problems, prodrugs, whose design is based on senescence-associated β-galactosidase (SA-β-gal), have been developed to selectively eliminate senescent cells. However, chemotherapies relying on targeted molecular inhibitors as senolytic drugs can induce drug resistance. In the current investigation, we devised a new strategy for selective degradation of target proteins in senescent cancer cells that utilizes a prodrug composed of the SA-β-gal substrate galactose (galacto) and the proteolysis-targeting chimeras (PROTACs) as senolytic agents...
April 18, 2024: Journal of Medicinal Chemistry