Implications of Dynamic Occupancy, Binding Kinetics, and Channel Gating Kinetics for hERG Blocker Safety Assessment and Mitigation.

Blockade of the hERG potassium channel prolongs the ventricular action potential (AP) and QT interval, and triggers early after depolarizations (EADs) and torsade de pointes (TdP) arrhythmia. Opinions differ as to the causal relationship between hERG blockade and TdP, the relative weighting of other contributing factors, definitive metrics of preclinical proarrhythmicity, and the true safety margin in humans. Here, we have used in silico techniques to characterize the effects of channel gating and binding kinetics on hERG occupancy, and of blockade on the human ventricular AP.

Englerin A Agonizes the TRPC4/C5 Cation Channels to Inhibit Tumor Cell Line Proliferation.

Englerin A is a structurally unique natural product reported to selectively inhibit growth of renal cell carcinoma cell lines. A large scale phenotypic cell profiling experiment (CLiP) of englerin A on ¬over 500 well characterized cancer cell lines showed that englerin A inhibits growth of a subset of tumor cell lines from many lineages, not just renal cell carcinomas. Expression of the TRPC4 cation channel was the cell line feature that best correlated with sensitivity to englerin A, suggesting the hypothesis that TRPC4 is the efficacy target for englerin A.

Genetic and functional analysis of human P2X5 reveals a distinct pattern of exon 10 polymorphism with predominant expression of the nonfunctional receptor isoform.

P2X5 is a member of the P2X family of ATP-gated nonselective cation channels, which exist as trimeric assemblies. P2X5 is believed to trimerize with another member of this family, P2X1. We investigated the single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) at the 3' splice site of exon 10 of the human P2X5 gene.

Mutations throughout the S6 region of the hKv1.5 channel alter the stability of the activation gate.

The S6 segment of voltage-gated K(+) channels is thought to contribute to the gate that opens the central permeation pathway. Here we present evidence that mutations throughout the cytoplasmic end of S6 strongly influence hKv1.5 channel gating characteristics.