Polypharmacology within CXCR4: Multiple binding sites and allosteric behavior

CXCR4 is a promiscuous receptor, which binds multiple diverse ligands. As usual in promiscuous proteins, CXCR4 has a large binding site, with multiple subsites, and high flexibility. Hence, it is not surprising that it is involved in the phenomenon of allosteric modulation. However, incomplete knowledge of allosteric ligand-binding sites has hampered an in-depth molecular understanding of how these inhibitors work. For example, it is known that lipidated fragments of intracellular GPCR loops, so called pepducins, such as pepducin ATI-2341, modulate CXCR4 activity using an agonist allosteric mechanism. Nevertheless, there are also examples of small organic molecules, such as AMD11070 and GSK812397, which may act as antagonist allosteric modulators. Here, we give new insights into this issue by proposing the binding interactions between the CXCR4 receptor and the above-mentioned allosteric modulators. We propose that CXCR4 has minimum two topographically different allosteric binding sites. One allosteric si...