Covalent Targeting of Histidine Residues with Aryl Fluorosulfates: Application to Mcl-1 BH3 Mimetics.

Covalent drugs provide pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic advantages over reversible agents. However, covalent strategies have been developed mostly to target cysteine (Cys) residues, which are rarely found in binding sites. Among other nucleophilic residues that could be in principle used for the design of covalent drugs, histidine (His) has not been given proper attention despite being in principle an attractive residue to pursue but underexplored.