A Lipidated Single-B-Chain Derivative of Relaxin Exhibits Improved In Vitro Serum Stability without Altering Activity

Praveen Praveen, Chao Wang, Thomas N.G. Handley, Hongkang Wu, Chrishan S. Samuel, Ross A.D. Bathgate, Mohammed Akhter Hossain

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Human relaxin-2 (H2 relaxin) is therapeutically very important due to its strong anti-fibrotic, vasodilatory, and cardioprotective effects. Therefore, relaxin’s receptor, relaxin family peptide receptor 1 (RXFP1), is a potential target for the treatment of fibrosis and related disorders, including heart failure. H2 relaxin has a complex two-chain structure (A and B) and three disulfide bridges. Our laboratory has recently developed B7-33 peptide, a single-chain agonist based on the B-chain of H2 relaxin. However, the peptide B7-33 has a short circulation time in vitro in serum (t1/2 = ~6 min). In this study, we report structure-activity relationship studies on B7-33 utilizing different fatty-acid conjugations at different positions. We have shown that by fatty-acid conjugation with an appropriate spacer length, the in vitro half-life of B7-33 can be increased from 6 min to 60 min. In the future, the lead lipidated molecule will be studied in animal models to measure its PK/PD properties, which will lead to their pre-clinical applications.

Original languageEnglish
Article number6616
Number of pages11
JournalInternational Journal of Molecular Sciences
Volume24
Issue number7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2023

Keywords

  • B7-33
  • H2 relaxin
  • RXFP1
  • structure-activity relationship (SAR)

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