AgHalo: A Facile Fluorogenic Sensor to Detect Drug-Induced Proteome Stress.
Liu, Y., Fares, M., Dunham, N.P., Gao, Z., Miao, K., Jiang, X., Bollinger, S.S., Boal, A.K., Zhang, X.(2017) Angew Chem Int Ed Engl 56: 8672-8676
- PubMed: 28557281 
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201702417
- Primary Citation of Related Structures:  
5VNP - PubMed Abstract: 
Drug-induced proteome stress that involves protein aggregation may cause adverse effects and undermine the safety profile of a drug. Safety of drugs is regularly evaluated using cytotoxicity assays that measure cell death. However, these assays provide limited insights into the presence of proteome stress in live cells. A fluorogenic protein sensor is reported to detect drug-induced proteome stress prior to cell death. An aggregation prone Halo-tag mutant (AgHalo) was evolved to sense proteome stress through its aggregation. Detection of such conformational changes was enabled by a fluorogenic ligand that fluoresces upon AgHalo forming soluble aggregates. Using 5 common anticancer drugs, we exemplified detection of differential proteome stress before any cell death was observed. Thus, this sensor can be used to evaluate drug safety in a regime that the current cytotoxicity assays cannot cover and be generally applied to detect proteome stress induced by other toxins.
Organizational Affiliation: 
Department of Chemistry, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA.