Potential applications of clickable probes in EGFR activity visualization and prediction of EGFR-TKI therapy response for NSCLC patients

Abstract

The epithelial growth factor receptor (EGFR) is abnormally overexpressed on the cell surface of cancer cells and is strongly associated with cancer cell proliferation, migration, differentiation, apoptosis, and angiogenesis. Tools enabling the visualization of EGFR in a structure-function approach are highly desirable to predict EGFR mutations and guide EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) treatment making. Here, we describe the design, synthesis, and application of new, potent and selective clickable probes 13 (HX03), 20 (HX04) and 24 (HX05) by introducing an alkyne ligation handle to visualize EGFR activity in living cancer cells and tissue slices. These clickable probes are versatile chemical tools based on the key pharmacophore (4-anilinoquinazoline) of EGFR-TKIs (e.g., canertinib, dacomitinib and afatinib) and are able to irreversibly target the kinase domain of EGFR. Among them, 13 exhibits the highest reactivity towards EGFR kinase, particularly to EGFR kinase with primary mutations. Using activity-based protein profiling strategy, 13 showed high sensitivity and selectivity in labeling of endogenous EGFR in a native cellular context. Moreover, 13 was applied to visualize EGFR mutant activity in tumour tissues from non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) xenograft mouse models, and patients with NSCLC for the prediction of EGFR-TKI sensitivity. These results demonstrate that strategically designed EGFR-TKI-based probes allow discriminating EGFR mutations in human tissues and hold promise as useful diagnostic tools in predicting EGFR-TKI therapy response.