Head-to-tail cyclization of a heptapeptide eliminates its cytotoxicity and significantly increases its inhibition effect on amyloid β -protein fibrillation and cytotoxicity

Amyloid-β (Aβ) protein aggregation is the main hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Inhibition of Aβ fibrillation is thus a promising therapeutic approach to the prevention and treatment of AD. Recently, we designed a heptapeptide inhibitor, LVFFARK (LK7). LK7 shows a promising inhibitory capability on Aβ fibrillation, but is prone to self-assembling and displays high cytotoxicity, which would hinder its practical application. Herein, we modified LK7 by a head-to-tail cyclization and obtained a cyclic LK7 (cLK7). cLK7 exhibits a different self-assembly behavior from LK7, and has higher stability against proteolysis than LK7 and little cytotoxicity to SHSY5Y cells. Thermodynamic analysis revealed that both LK7 and cLK7 could bind to Aβ40 by electrostatic interactions, hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic interactions, but the binding affinity of cLK7 for Aβ40 (KD = 4.96 μmol/L) is six times higher than that of LK7 (KD = 32.2 μmol/L). The strong binding enables cLK7 to stabilize the secondary structure of Aβ40 and potently inhibit its nucleation, fibrillation and cytotoxicity at extensive concentration range, whereas LK7 could only moderately inhibit Aβ40 fibrillation and cytotoxicity at low concentrations. The findings indicate that the peptide cyclization is a promising approach to enhance the performance of peptide-based amyloid inhibitors.