Publication： ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters
Date of Publication: July 14, 2020
Authors： Minsup Kim, Jun-Dong Wei, Dipesh S. Harmalkar, Ja-il Goo, Kyeong Lee, Yongseok Choi, Jae-Hong Kim, and Art E. Cho
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsmedchemlett.0c00065

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) have always been important drug targets in the pharmaceutical industry. One major question for the current GPCR drug discovery is how drugs have distinct efficacies at the same GPCR target. Related to this question, we studied how different ligands can have disparate efficacies at Leukotriene B4 receptor (BLT2). By using molecular modeling studies, we predicted that Tyr2716.51 located at TM6 of BLT2 performs as a key trigger for its activation and verified the prediction by site-directed mutagenesis, chemotactic motility studies, which included a chemical derivative of agonist CAY10583. We further identified Asn2756.55 located at TM6 as a weak activation trigger in BLT2 and performed double mutation studies to confirm our computational results. Our results provide strong evidence for the exact mechanism of ligand efficacy at BLT2.