DSF assay
Recombinant proteins were assessed as described in (Fedorov O, Niesen FH, Knapp S. Kinase inhibitor selectivity profiling using differential scanning fluorimetry. Methods Mol Biol. 2012;795:109-18.)
ITC
The ITC measurement was performed on a NanoITC (TA Instruments) at 25°C in buffer containing 30 mM HEPES pH 7.5, 300 mM NaCl, 0.5 mM TCEP and 5% Glycerol. CASK at 141 µM was injected into the cell, containing compounds at 2-6 µM. The integrated heat of titration was calculated and fitted to a single, independent binding model using the software provided by the manufacture. The thermodynamic parameters (ΔH and TΔS), equilibrium association and dissociation constants (Ka and KD), and stoichiometry (n) were calculated.
NanoBRET (Promega)
N-terminal NanoLuc and C-terminal NanoLuc/ kinase fusions, encoded in pFC32K expression vectors (Promega), were used. For cellular BRET target engagement experiments, HEK-293T were transfected with NLuc/target fusion constructs using FuGENE HD (Promega) according to the manufacturer’s protocol. Briefly, Nluc/target fusion constructs were diluted into Transfection Carrier DNA (Promega) at a mass ratio of 1:10 (mass/mass), diluted with OptiMEM media to a twentieth part of the volume of the HEK cells. FuGENE HD was added at a ratio of 1:3 (μg DNA: μL FuGENE HD). One part (vol) of FuGENE HD complexes was combined with 20 parts (vol) of HEK-293 cells suspended at a density of 2 x 105 cells/ml and afterwards the mixture was incubated in a humidified, 37°C/5% CO2 incubator for 24 h.
After this, the cells were washed and resuspendend in OptiMEM medium. For Target engagement assays 4 x 103 cells/well were plated out in a 384-well plate (Greiner). For all experiments the recommended energy transfer probes (Promega) were used if possible, at a final concentration of the Kd of the tracer on the target. In some cases, higher tracer concentrations were used for better signal-to-noise ratios. Compounds and the energy transfer probe were added to the cells and incubated for 2h in humidified, 37°C/5% CO2 incubator. The chemical inhibitors were prepared as concentrated stock solutions in DMSO (Sigma-Aldrich) and diluted with OptiMEM for this experiment. Straight before the measurement NanoGlo Substrate and Extracellular NanoLuc Inhibitor (Promega) were mixed carefully with the supernatant.
Luminescence was measured on a BMP PheraStar with 450 nm (donor) and 600 nm filters (acceptor) using 0.5 s integration time. Milli-BRET units (mBU) are calculated by multiplying the raw BRET values by 1000. Tracer and DMSO controls were used to calculate a normalized signal.
mBU=1000*I[600 nm]/I[450 nm]
Inhibitory constants were calculated by using the sigmoidal dose-response (four parameters) equation in GraphPad Prism.
Y=Bottom+((Top-Bottom) )/(1+〖10〗^(X-LogIC50*HillSlope) )