Inhibition of papain-like cysteine proteases and legumain by caspase-specific inhibitors: when reaction mechanism is more important than specificity.

We report here that a number of commonly used small peptide caspase inhibitors consisting of a caspase recognition sequence linked to chloromethylketone, fluoromethylketone or aldehyde reactive group efficiently inhibit other cysteine proteases than caspases. The in vitro studies included cathepsins B, H, L, S, K, F, V, X and C, papain and legumain. Z-DEVD-cmk was shown to be the preferred irreversible inhibitor of most of the cathepsins in vitro, followed by Z-DEVD-fmk, Ac-YVAD-cmk, Z-YVAD-fmk and Z-VAD-fmk. Inactivation of legumain by all the inhibitors investigated was moderate, whereas cathepsins H and C were poorly inhibited or not inhibited at all. Inhibition by aldehydes was not very potent. All the three fluoromethylketones efficiently inhibited cathepsins in Jurkat and human embryonic kidney 293 cells at concentrations of 100 microM. Furthermore, they completely inhibited cathepsins B and X activity in tissue extracts at concentrations as low as 1 microM. These results suggest that data based on the use of these inhibitors should be taken with caution and that other proteases may be implicated in the processes previously ascribed solely to caspases.

Mutations in the QVVAG region of the cysteine proteinase inhibitor stefin B.

Variants of human stefin B were constructed by cassette mutagenesis. Val47 as the constituent of highly conserved QVVAG sequence was substituted by hydrophobic amino acids of increasing size - Ala, Ile and Phe. Recombinant proteins were expressed in E. coli and Ki values for papain were determined. Substitutions did not cause a major change in Ki value and we conclude that the interaction with the proteinases is not the reason for the conservation of the pentapeptide.