Optimizing the Multivalent Binding of the Bacterial Lectin LecA by Glycopeptide Dendrimers for Therapeutic Purposes

Bacterial lectins are nonenzymatic sugar-binding proteins involved in the formation of biofilms and the onset of virulence. The weakness of individual sugar-lectin interactions is compensated by the potentially large number of simultaneous copies of such contacts, resulting in high overall sugar-lectin affinities and marked specificities. Therapeutic compounds functionalized with sugar residues can compete with the host glycans for binding to lectins only if they are able to take advantage of this multivalent binding mechanism. Glycopeptide dendrimers, featuring treelike topologies with sugar moieties at their leaves, have already shown great promise in this regard. However, optimizing the dendrimers' amino acid sequence is necessary to match the dynamics of the lectin active sites with that of the multivalent ligands. This work combines long-time-scale coarse-grained simulations of dendrimers and lectins with a reasoned exploration of the dendrimer sequence space in an attempt to suggest sequences that could maximize multivalent binding to the galactose-specific bacterial lectin LecA. These candidates are validated by simulations of mixed dendrimer/lectin solutions, and the effects of the dendrimers on lectin dynamics are discussed. This approach is an attractive first step in the conception of therapeutic compounds based on the dendrimer scaffold and contributes to the understanding of the various classes of multivalency that underpin the ubiquitous "sugar code".