Patent Application: US-73465108-A

Abstract:
the present invention relates to inhibitors of malt1 proteolytic and / or autoproteolytic activity . more specifically , it relates to compounds such as , but not limited to peptide derivates such as z - lssr - cho , z - lssr - cmk , z - gasr - cho , and z - gasr - cmk , and small compounds such as 5 -- 2 - furyl ] methylene }- 2 - thioxodihydro - 4 , 6 - pyrimidinedione and variants thereof , and the use of those compounds for the preparation of a medicament . the invention relates further to a method to screen for inhibitors of the malt1 proteolytic and / or autoproteolytic activity .

Description:
antibodies used for immunodetection of the flag epitope ( m2 ) were from sigma - aldrich , for bcl10 ( sc - 5273 ), traf6 ( sc - 7221 ) and lyn ( 44 ) from santa cruz biotechnology , for anti - cd3 ( clone ucht - 1 ) and anti - cd28 ( clone 28 . 2 ) from pharmingen and for phosphorylated iκb - α ( ser32 / 36 , 5a5 ) and phosphorylated erk ( thr202 / tyr204 , # 9101s ) from cell signalling . anti - β - actin ( clone ac - 15 ) was purchased from sigma , anti - malt1 - c is a rabbit polyclonal antiserum raised against aa 731 - 824 of malt1 ( baens et al ., 2006 ). anti - a20 ( clone 59a624 ) was from ebioscience , anti - e - tag from amersham biosciences , anti - malt1 ( h - 300 ) and anti - iκbα from santa cruz biotechnology ), anti - β actin from mp biomedicals . pcaggs - e - ha20 - r / a and pcaggs - e - a20 - rr / aa were constructed by pcr mutagenesis . constructs encoding flag - bcl10 , myc - malt1 or myc - malt1 - c / a and myc - api2 - malt1 or myc - api2 - malt1 - c / a ( fusion of exon 7 of api2 to exon 8 of mlt ), were described previously ( noels et al ., 2007 ). all other constructs for expressing proteins in eukaryotic cells were made in pcdna3 . 1 encoding an n - terminal flag - epitope ( pcd - f - x , with x the gene of interest ). to direct raft association of proteins , inserts were cloned in pcd - mp - f - x with the code for a myristoylation / palmytoylation ( mp ) motif of lck ( mgcvcssnpedd seq id no : 3 )) in front of the flag epitope . a vector enabling expression of biotinylated proteins was constructed by introducing oligonucleotides encoding the avi - tag sequence ( glndifeaqkiewhe ( seq id no : 4 )) ( beckett et al ., 1999 ) downstream of the sequences for n - terminal flag epitope in the plasmid pcdna3 . 1 ( pcd - f - bio - x ). two other vectors were generated encoding the bio - tag , preceded by a flexible linker ( sgssgssg ( seq id no : 5 )), c - terminal of the multiple cloning site ( pcd - f - x - bioc and pcd - mp - f - x - bioc ). these vectors were used to generate the different bio - constructs for malt1 and mutants . malt1 fragments with the lssr ( seq id no : 1 ) mutation , at residues 146 - 149 generated by pcr - based mutagenesis , was subcloned in the ( mp -) malt1 construct . all other malt1 mutants , pcd - f - ikkγ and pcd - ha - ub ( ubiquitin ) were constructed and described previously ( noels et al ., 2007 ; baens et al ., 2006 ). pma was from sigma , ionomycin and mg132 were from calbiochem . sigenome smartpool sirna oligonucleotides against a20 and malt1 as well as non - targeting sirna were purchased from dharmacon . expression and purification of malt1c - gyraseb has been described ( sun et al ., 2004 ). hek - 293t and jurkat t - cells were cultured in dmem - f12 ( invitrogen ) supplemented with 10 % fetal calf serum at 37 ° c . in 5 % co 2 . ssk41 malt lymphoma b - cells ) and — for the a20 experiments ( example 6 - 9 )— jurkat t - cells were cultured in rpmi1640 ( invitrogen ) supplemented with 10 % fetal bovine serum , 2 mm glutamine , 0 . 4 mm sodiumpyruvate , 4 μm β - mercaptoethanol and antibiotics . monoclonal stable cell lines were generated by electroporating 5 × 10 6 cells with 20 μg of linearized plasmid dna ( 250 v , 960 μf , genepulser biorad ), followed by single cell dilution and selection with the appropriate antibiotics . monoclonal jurkat cell lines were generated stably expressing bira from a pmscv - flag - puromycin vector , alone or in combination with a bio - tagged version of malt1 , malt1 - r149a and malt1 - c464a and clones with equal expression levels were chosen for further experiments . to mimic antigen receptor stimulation , jurkat t - cells were stimulated with 10 μg / ml anti - cd3 / 2 . 5 μg / ml anti - cd28 or 50 ng / ml pma ( sigma - aldrich ) and 100 ng / ml ionomycin ( sigma - aldrich ) for the indicated time . after washing with pbs , cells were lysed for 30 min on ice in ndlb lysis buffer ( 0 . 3 % np - 40 , 20 mm tris - cl ph 7 , 6 , 110 mm nacl , 2 mm edta and 10 % glycerol , supplemented with phosphatase inhibitors ( 30 mm naf , 1 mm na 3 vo 4 , 2 mm na 2 moo 4 , 5 mm na 4 p 2 o 2 ) and 1 × complete protease inhibitor cocktail ( roche applied science )). jurkat cells overexpressing malt1 or malt1 - c464a were described previously ( noels et al ., 2007 ) primary human t - cells were purified from the blood of healthy volunteers ( obtained from the belgian red cross blood bank ). briefly , t - cells , b - cells and mononuclear cells were purified by ficoll - hypaque gradient centrifugation of buffy coat . t - cells were further purified by a nylon wool fiber column ( polysciences ). hek293t cells were transiently transfected by calcium phosphate dna coprecipitation . jurkat cells were transiently transfected with expression plasmids with the amaxa nucleofector kit according to the manufacturer &# 39 ; s protocol ( amaxa ag ). sirna transfection of jurkat cells was done by electroporation of 5 × 106 cells in 0 . 5 ml serum - free culture medium containing 400 nm sirna oligos at 300 v and 1050 uf using a biorad electroporator . after electroporation , cells were returned to 10 ml complete medium . electroporation was repeated 24 h later and cells were maintained for 2 more days before stimulation and harvesting . the following predesigned sirnas were used for gene knock - down experiments in hek - 293t cells : a mix of aaggtactggagcctgaagga ( seq id no : 9 ) and aaggttgcacagtcacagaat ( seq id no : 10 ) for malt1 , a mix of aagggctggaaaattgttaga ( seq id no : 11 ) and aaggactaaaatgtagcagtt ( seq id no : 12 ) for bcl10 and a control sirna for gfp ( ambion ). hek - 293t cells in 12 - well plates were transfected with sirna duplexes ( 50 nm ) using oligofectamine ( invitrogen ). after 4 hours the medium was replaced and cells were transfected as described previously ( baens et al ., 2006 ). nfκb reporter assays were performed as described ( baens et al ., 2006 ; heyninck et al ., 1999 ). nfκb dependent luciferase expression and constitutive β - galactosidase expression are expressed as luc / bgal to normalize for potential differences in transfection efficiency . sirna transfection of jurkat cells was performed by electroporation of 5 10 6 cells in 0 . 5 ml serum free medium containing 400 nm sirnas ( mix of 5 ′- cctgtgaaatagtactgcacttaca ( seq id no : 13 ) and 5 ′- cactctgaagtaagagcaatgggaa ( seq id no : 14 ), invitrogen ) using a biorad electroporator at 300v and 1050 μf . electroporation was repeated 24 hours later and cells were cultured for 2 more days before harvesting . il - 2 in the supernatant of jurkat cells , unstimulated or stimulated for 6 hours with 50 ng / ml pma — 100 ng / ml ionomcyin , was measured by elisa according to the manufacturer &# 39 ; s protocol ( pharmingen ). the bio - ip method is described by de boer et al . ( 26 ). briefly a protein of interest containing the biotinylation tag becomes biotinylated in vivo via co - expression of the e . coli bira biotin protein ligase . after cell lysis in ndlb lysis buffer for 30 min on ice , the biotinylated protein complex is precipitated using paramagnetic streptavidin beads ( dynabeads m - 280 , invitrogen ) for 2 hours at 4 ° c ., or ikkγ is precipitated with anti - flag using protein - g sepharose beads ( ge healthcare ). protein precipitates were washed four times in lysis buffer and boiled for 10 min at 95 ° c . in 1 × sds gel loading buffer ( final concentration of 4 % sds and 300 mm β - mercaptoethanol ). all samples were fractionated on 4 - 12 % sds - polyacrylamide gels ( nupage , invitrogen ) and transferred to polyvinylidene difluoride membranes ( ge healthcare - life sciences ) for detection . for the a20 experiments ( example 6 - 9 ), for co - immunoprecipitation 1 . 5 × 10 7 jurkat cells were lysed in 1 ml lysis buffer ( 20 mm tris ph 7 . 5 , 137 mm nacl , 1 . 5 mm mgcl2 , 1 % tx - 100 and phosphatase and protease inhibitors ). immunoprecipitation of malt1 was done by adding 8 μg anti - malt1 and overnight incubation at 4 °, followed by the addition of protein a trisacryl beads ( pierce ) for 2 hours . beads were washed four times with lysis buffer and eluted by adding laemmli loading buffer . coprecipitating proteins were separated by sds - page and analyzed by western blotting using ecl detection ( perkinelmer life sciences ). for detection of a20 cleavage , jurkat cells were stimulated with 10 μg / ml anti - cd3 / 10 μg / ml anti - cd28 or with 200 ng / ml pma / 1 μm ionomycin for the indicated times . cells were lysed in 100 μl lysis buffer and 60 μg lysate was analyzed by western blotting with anti - a20 antibody . assays were performed in 50 μl with 100 μm substrate in a buffer consisting of 50 mm mes ( ph 5 . 5 ), 150 mm nacl , 10 % ( w / v ) sucrose , 0 . 1 % ( w / v ) chaps , 10 mm dithiothreitol and 1 m ( nh 4 ) 3 citrate , supplemented with bio - ip purified malt1 or mutants , isolated from 3 10 6 transiently transfected hek - 293t cells , or with 1 μg recombinant malt1 or malt1 - c464a ( sun et al ., 2004 ). time - dependent release of free amido - 4 - methylcoumarin ( amc ) was measured on a fluostar galaxy reader ( bmg labtechnologies , offenburg , germany ), and activity was expressed as the increase of rlu per minute per well . ac - lssr - amc ( see seq id no : 1 ), z - lssr - cho ( see seq id no : 1 ) and ac - gasr - cho ( see seq id no : 2 ) were purchased from anaspec . compounds used in the screening were obtained from chembridge . the expression vector plt10t3a20 containing the human a20 gene under the control of a t7 promoter was used for in vitro coupled transcription - translation of [ 35s ] methionine labeled human a20 in an in vitro reticulocyte lysate system ( promega biotec ) according to the manufacturers protocol . translation reactions ( 2 μl ) were incubated with 500 , 1000 or 1500 nm of recombinant malt1c - gyraseb ( sun et al ., 2004 ) in a total volume of 50 μl paracaspase assay buffer ( 50 mm mes ph 5 . 5 , 150 mm nacl , 10 % sucrose w / v , 0 . 1 % w / v chaps , 10 mm dtt , 1 m ammonium citrate ) for 1 . 5 hours at 37 ° c . the resulting cleavage products were analyzed by sds - page and autoradiography . the malt1 protein synergistically activates nfκb with bcl10 when co - expressed in 293t cells . human malt1 contains a caspase p20 - like domain . interestingly , mutation of the putative catalytic cysteine ( c464a ) in this domain reduced the synergism with bcl10 ( lucas et al ., 2001 and fig1 , panel a ), hypothesizing that bcl10 - mediated dimerization of malt1 might initiate nfκb signaling via activation of its caspase p20 - like domain . to investigate whether bcl10 - mediated dimerization of malt1 induces its auto - proteolysis , we performed streptavidin - mediated pull - downs of malt1 with an n - terminal tag . western blot analysis indeed showed the presence of an n - terminal fragment of 19 kda ( p19 ), which was absent without bcl10 co - expression or when bcl10 was co - expressed with the c464a malt1 mutant ( fig1 , panel b ). metacaspases have specificity towards r / k residues in the substrate p1 position ( vercammen et al ., 2004 ). based on the apparent molecular weight of the n - terminal fragment , r / k residues in the first ig - like domain of malt1 were mutated to evaluate their possible involvement in the cleavage site leading to the generation of p19 . introduction of an r149a mutation in malt1 prevented both p19 production upon bcl10 co - expression ( fig1 , panel b ) and loss of synergism with bcl10 for nfκb activation , whereas malt1 - r191a behaved like wild - type malt1 ( fig1 , panel c ). co - ip experiments showed that both the c464a and r149a mutants are still able to interact with bcl10 ( fig1 , panel d ). these data suggest the hypothesis that the synergism of malt1 for bcl10 - induced nfκb activation requires its auto - proteolysis at r149 . auto - proteolytic cleavage of initiator caspases upon proximity - driven dimerization occurs via interchain cleavage . to investigate whether malt1 processing might result from an intermolecular , auto - proteolytic cleavage event we co - expressed bcl10 together with the r149a and the c464a mutants of malt1 . fig1 , panel b shows the reappearance of the p19 fragment , absent when each of the malt1 mutants was co - expressed with bcl10 separately . taken together the data suggest that malt1 has interchain auto - proteolytic activity , with c464 involved in the catalytic site and r149 in the cleavage site ( fig1 , panel e ). raft association of malt1 is sufficient for cleavage into p19 and p76 fragments previously we demonstrated that bcl10 co - expression induced the redistribution of malt1 to the lipid rafts in 293t cells ( noels et al ., 2007 ). we induced raft association of malt1 in 293t cells by adding a myristoylation - palmitoylation signal sequence ( mp - malt1 ). this was sufficient to activate an nfκb luciferase reporter gene and to generate the p19 fragment , whereas ectopic expression of malt1 was not able to do so ( fig2 , panel b ). western blot analysis of detergent resistant membrane fractions confirmed the association of mp - malt1 with the lipid rafts , in contrast to malt1 shown previously to reside exclusively in cytosolic fractions ( noels et al ., 2007 ; baens et al ., 2006 ), and the p19 fragment was detected in raft fractions ) as well as in total cell lysates ( fig2 , panel c ). again no p19 was detected upon expression of either r149a - or c464a - mp - malt1 , whereas their co - expression restored p19 formation ( fig2 , panel c ). to identify c - terminal fragments resulting from malt1 proteolysis , we performed bio - ips with mp - malt1 constructs carrying a c - terminal avi - tag . a 76 kda fragment ( p76 ) could be visualized which was absent in pull - downs from the c464a mutant of mp - malt1 ( fig2 , panel d ). since malt1 has a molecular weight of approximately 96 kda , this is consistent with the cleavage of malt1 in p19 and p76 fragments . caspases efficiently cleave synthetic substrates consisting of a four amino acid recognition sequence linked , via the carboxy - terminal aspartate , to a fluorogenic amine . based on the presumed cleavage site of malt1 , ac - lccr - amc ( see seq id no : 15 ) would be a suitable substrate for demonstrating malt1 paracaspase activity in vitro . as the synthesis of a lccr ( seq id no : 15 ) peptide is difficult , we first demonstrated that mutating both c147 and c148 in malt1 to s , resulted in a lssr ( seq id no : 1 ) malt1 mutant that could still be cleaved in cellular assays ( fig3 , panel a ). next we showed that bio - ip purified malt1 was indeed able to cleave ac - lssr - amc ( see seq id no : 1 ) in vitro , whereas bio - 1p purified c464 mutant was not ( fig3 , panel b ). bio - ip of mock - transfected cells also showed no activity , which together with the results for bio - ip - purified c464a malt1 excludes precipitation of a contaminating protease . interestingly the proteolytic activity was dependent on the addition of the cosmotropic salt ammonium citrate , as previously shown for caspases ( boatright et al ., 2003 ). substrate cleavage by malt1 was efficiently blocked by a z - lssr - cho ( see seq id no : 1 ) and a z - gasr - cho ( see seq id no : 2 ) inhibitor at equimolar concentrations ( fig3 , panel b ). furthermore , the r149a mutant was as efficient in substrate processing as malt1 ( fig3 , panel c ). finally , the recombinant malt1 p20 fragment ( sun et al ., 2004 ) efficiently cleaved the ac - lssr - amc ( see seq id no : 1 ) substrate , whereas the recombinant c464a mutant failed to do so , although its higher concentration ( fig1 , panel d ). again , adding z - lssr - cho ( see seq id no : 1 ) or z - gasr - cho ( see seq id no : 2 ) completely blocked the proteolytic activity of recombinant malt1 . taken together the data indicate that malt1 has proteolytic activity in vitro and that this activity is dependent on the presence of c464 but independent of r149 . to further assess the possible role of malt1 auto - proteolysis for nfκb signaling , we generated jurkat cell lines with stable expression of malt1 and its r149a and c464a mutants respectively . ectopic expression of malt1 in jurkat cells increased phosphorylation of iκbα in response to pma / ionomycin or cd3 / cd28 stimulation compared to equal levels of the r149a - or c464a - malt1 mutant ( fig4 , panels a and b ). activation and phosphorylation of erk in response to pma / ionomycin or cd3 / cd28 stimulation is malt1 - independent ( ruland et al ., 2003 ) and was unaffected ( fig4 , panels a and b ). likewise , jurkat cells pre - treated with sirnas against malt1 showed reduced phosphorylation of iκbα after pma / ionomycin treatment . this reduction could be reversed by ectopic expression of malt1 ( insensitive to the sirna ) but not by the r149a or c464a mutants ( fig4 , panel c ). finally , overexpression of malt1 enhanced nfκb - dependent production of il2 after stimulation with pma / ionomycin more potently than either the r149a or the c464a mutant ( fig4 , panel d ), consistent with the higher nfκb activation by wild - type malt1 . taken together , these data indicate that intermolecular auto - proteolytic cleavage of malt1 is involved in its nfκb activating potential . thus far , our data indicate that auto - proteolytic cleavage of malt1 at r149 is involved in its nfκb signaling potential . to study the properties of the malt1 cleavage fragments , we generated expression constructs for p19 , p76 and malt1 - c ( fig5 , panel a ). the latter fragment activated the bcl10 - ikk pathway in vitro via oligomerization and activation of traf6 ( sun et al ., 2004 ). similar to ectopic expression of malt1 , transient expression of malt1 - c did not activate an nfκb reporter gene in 293t cells ( fig5 , panel b ), nor did the p19 construct ( data not shown ). expression of the p76 fragment however potently induced nfκb activity , suggesting that removal of the n - terminal dd releases nfκb signaling potential of malt1 ( fig5 , panel b ). nfκb activation by malt1 requires traf6 binding via two distinct sites ( 19 ), which are both present in the p76 cleavage fragment . mutation of one traf6 binding site , either e313a / e316a ( t6ig - m ) or e806a ( t6c - m ), abolished the potential of p76 to activate nfκb signaling in 293t cells ( fig5 , panel b ). bio - ip experiments showed that p76 , like malt1 interacted with traf6 , whereas both the t6ig - m and the t6c - m mutation potently reduced this interaction , though a complete block of traf6 binding required mutation of both sites ( t6ig / c - m ) ( fig5 , panel b ). in contrast , the malt1 - c fragment still bound traf6 via the t6c binding site , however did not activate nfκb signaling by its own . furthermore , nfκb activation by p76 in 293t cells was associated with increased polyubiquitination of ikkγ ( fig5 , panel c ). taken together , these data suggest that malt1 p76 , which can be formed by auto - proteolysis , activates nfκb in a traf6 - dependent manner . the interaction of malt1 with bcl10 requires both the dd and the ig - like domains of malt1 ( noels et al ., 2007 ), suggesting that bcl10 no longer interacts with or is required for nfκb activation by p76 . bio - ips for p76 indeed failed to demonstrate an interaction with bcl10 ( fig5 , panel b ), conform our previous results with a malt1 construct lacking the dd domain ( noels et al ., 2007 ). moreover , sirna - mediated knock - down of bcl10 expression did not affect nfκb activation by p76 ( fig5 , panel d ). in contrast , reducing the levels of endogenous malt1 enhanced p76 - mediated nfκb activation ( fig5 , panel d ), most likely because of an increase of free traf6 otherwise bound to malt1 . taken together , these data suggest that nfκb activation by the p76 cleavage fragment of malt1 no longer requires bcl10 . the zinc finger protein a20 negatively regulates proinflammatory gene expression by down - regulating nfκb activation in response to different stimuli ( beyaert et al ., 2000 ; lee et al , 2000 ). most cell types do not constitutively express a20 but rapidly up - regulate a20 mrna expression upon stimulation of nfκb , implicating a20 in the negative feedback regulation of nfκb activation ( beyaert et al ., 2000 ). in contrast , lymphoid organs and especially t - lymphocytes have been reported to constitutively express a20 mrna ( lee et al ., 2000 ; tewari et al ., 1995 ). in accordance with these data , we observed constitutive protein expression of a20 in jurkat t - cells ( fig6 , panel a ), suggesting a potential role for posttranslational regulation of a20 in these cells . interestingly , triggering the tcr complex of these cells with agonistic anti - cd3 / anti - cd28 antibodies led to a rapid decline in a20 expression upon stimulation for 15 to 30 minutes ( fig6 , panel a , upper panel ). expression levels of a20 returned to baseline levels 60 minutes after stimulation . this is similar to the rapid degradation and resynthesis of iκbα that is indicative of nfκb activation . interestingly , longer exposure of the same immunoblot revealed the rapid appearance of a faint protein band of approximately 37 kda that was specifically recognized by the anti - a20 antibody ( fig6 , panel a ). the latter is a mouse monoclonal antibody that recognizes the c - terminal zinc finger containing part of a20 , indicating that the 37 kda band represents a c - terminal protein fragment of a20 ( which we will further refer to as a20p37 ). similar results were obtained after administration of pma / ionomycin , which mimics tcr signaling by activating pkcθ ( fig6 , panel b ). since a20p37 was already detectable 15 minutes after tcr stimulation and its production could not be blocked by pre - treating the cells with the protein translation inhibitor cycloheximide , a posttranslational proteolytic event rather than de novo protein synthesis seems to generate a20p37 . because the a20p37 levels were rather low , we speculated that this fragment of a20 was unstable and rapidly degraded . indeed , treatment of jurkat cells with either anti - cd3 / anti - cd28 or pma / ionomycin together with the proteasome inhibitor mg132 resulted in the accumulation of a20p37 ( fig6 , panel c ), indicating that the a20p37 fragment is rapidly degraded by the proteasome . importantly , tcr stimulation not only stimulated the production of a20p37 in jurkat cells but also in primary human t - cells ( fig6 , panel d ). as both tcr - and pma / ionomycin - induced signaling pathways converge on pkcθ activation ( sun et al ., 2000 ), resulting in the assembly of the cbm complex 1 , ( ruland et al ., 2001 , 2003 ; ruefli - brasse et al ., 2003 ; wang et al ., 2002 ; su et al ., 2002 ) our observations suggest that the cbm complex may be involved in the generation of a20p37 . gene disruption studies have shown that the cbm complex is not only indispensable for tcr - induced nfκb activation but also mediates bcr - induced signaling ( sommer et al ., 2005 ; ruland et al ., 2001 ; ruefli - brasse et al ., 2003 ; su et al ., 2002 ; egawa et al ., 2003 ). therefore , we investigated whether a20p37 was also generated upon activation of the b - cell lymphoma cell lines raji and ssk41 . in both cell lines pma / ionomycin stimulation resulted in production of a20p37 , which accumulated upon proteasome inhibition with mg132 ( fig6 , panel e ). moreover , a20p37 was also generated upon stimulation of ssk41 cells with anti - igm , which triggers the bcr itself ( fig6 , panel e ). the latter cells are derived from a malt - type b - cell lymphoma and over express malt1 because of nine copies of the mlt gene in their genome ( sanchez - izquidero et al ., 2003 ). interestingly , in ssk41 cells but not raji cells , treatment with mg132 as such was sufficient for generating a20p37 , suggesting that overexpression of malt1 in ssk41 cells not only spontaneously induces nfκb activation but also the specific proteolytic cleavage of a20 ( sanchez - izquidero et al ., 2003 and fig6 , panel e ). finally , it should be noted that stimulation of jurkat cells with tnf , which does not lead to activation of the cbm complex , did not induce the generation of a20p37 . altogether , the above data suggest a role for the cbm complex , and for malt1 in particular , in the generation of a20p37 after bcr - and tcr - stimulation . in order to further analyze the role of malt1 in tcr - induced a20p37 production , we transfected jurkat cells with an sirna specifically directed against malt1 ( simalt1 ) and stimulated the cells with anti - cd3 / anti - cd28 in the absence or presence of mg132 . as shown by western blotting , simalt1 efficiently down - regulated malt1 expression . interestingly , in contrast to non - transfected or control sirna transfected cells , simalt1 treated cells did not show detectable levels of a20p37 after tcr - triggering , even in the presence of mg132 ( fig7 , panel a ). comparable results were obtained with a different set of malt1 targeting sirna molecules . as this sirna experiment further points to a role of malt1 in the proteolytic generation of a20p37 upon tcr - triggering , we next wanted to investigate whether malt1 and a20 reside within one complex in tcr stimulated cells . for this purpose , jurkat cells were stimulated for different time periods with anti - cd3 / anti - cd28 and malt1 immunoprecipitates were analyzed for the presence of bcl10 and a20 by immunoblotting . whereas bcl10 already coimmunoprecipitated with malt1 in unstimulated cells , a20 did not ( fig7 , panel b ). however , 10 minutes tcr - stimulation allowed a20 to enter the bcl10 / malt1 complex , and this interaction lasted for at least 60 minutes ( fig7 , panel b ). similarly , also pma / ionomycin treatment led to the recruitment of a20 into the bcl10 / malt1 complex ( fig2 , panel b , last lane ). our observation that malt1 and a20 reside in a single complex upon tcr stimulation suggests that malt1 might be responsible for the tcr - induced proteolytic generation of a20p37 . although malt1 contains a c - terminal domain that shows strong homology to the catalytic domain of caspases ( uren et al ., 2000 ; snipas et al ., 2004 ), no proteolytic activity of malt1 could be demonstrated so far . based on sequence homology with caspases , malt1 cysteine residue 464 was predicted as part of the catalytic site . to analyze the potential of malt1 to generate the p37 fragment of a20 , we tested the ability of malt1 or its catalytically inactive c464a mutant to induce the cleavage of n - terminally e - tagged a20 upon overexpression in hek293t cells . bcl10 was cotransfected in order to activate malt113 . western blotting and immunodetection with the anti - a20 antibody revealed that overexpression of bcl10 / malt1 induces a 37 kda fragment of a20 that corresponds in size to a20p37 that was observed in jurkat cells stimulated with pma / ionomycin ( fig7 , panel c , left panel ). in addition , immunodetection of the same western blot with an anti - e - tag antibody revealed a protein fragment of approximately 50 kda upon overexpression of bcl10 / malt1 ( referred to as a20p50 , fig7 , panel c , right panel ). since a20 has a molecular weight of approximately 85 kda , these findings indicate that a20 is cleaved at a single site , resulting in an n - terminal fragment of 50 kda ( a20p50 ) and a c - terminal part of 37 kda ( a20p37 ). strikingly , co - expression of bcl10 / malt1 - c464a did not generate any of these a20 fragments , indicating that the observed cleavage of a20 depends on the proteolytic activity of malt1 ( fig7 , panel c ). consistent with the above results obtained upon overexpression of bcl - 10 / malt1 , also overexpression of the malt lymphoma associated fusion protein api2 - malt1 resulted in the proteolysis of a20 into a p50 and a p37 fragment . moreover , the catalytically inactive api2 - malt1 - c464a mutant failed to cleave a20 ( fig7 , panel c ). both in case of api2 - malt1 as well as bcl10 / malt1 overexpression , the a20p37 c - terminal fragment was relatively less prominent than the n - terminal a20p50 fragment ( fig7 , panel c ), which is in line with the rapid degradation of a20p37 observed in t - cells and b - cells . the proteolytic activity of malt1 on a20 was subsequently confirmed in an in vitro assay with recombinant malt1 and [ 35 s ] methionine - labeled a20 . the recombinant malt1 we used represents the c - terminal caspase - like domain containing part of malt1 ( residues 334 - 824 ) fused to a fragment of bacterial gyrase b ( malt1c - gyraseb ), which enables malt1 - c oligomerization . this malt1 fusion has previously already been shown to activate the ikk - complex in an in vitro kinase assay ( sun et al ., 2004 ). in vitro incubation of radiolabeled a20 with recombinant malt1c - gyraseb resulted in the generation of an a20 fragment of approximately 50 kda ( fig7 , panel d ), which corresponds in size to the n - terminal fragment of a20 that was detected in bcl - 10 / malt1 and api2 - malt1 transfected hek293t cells ( fig7 , panel c ). in contrast , incubation of a20 with the catalytically inactive malt1c - gyraseb - c464a mutant protein did not result in a20 cleavage . we were unable to detect the c - terminal a20p37 fragment in the in vitro assay . the latter most likely reflects the lower stability of this fragment as already mentioned above , as well as the fact that the a20p37 fragment contains 3 times less radiolabeled methionine residues than the n - terminal a20 fragment , decreasing the sensitivity of detection . altogether these data indicate that malt1 is a functional cysteine protease that is able to cleave a20 . in caspases , p1 specificity directed to aspartic acid is dictated by arginine and glutamine residues located in the p20 and p10 caspase subunits , respectively , which help to position the substrate aspartic acid in the catalytic site ( earnshaw et al ., 1999 ). although paracaspases such as malt1 are caspase - like proteins , alignment of paracaspases , mammalian caspases and plant metacaspases ( another family member of the cd clan of proteases with a caspase - like domain ) shows that the above mentioned glutamine is replaced by an aspartic acid residue in case of paracaspases and metacaspases ( uren et al ., 2000 ). this predicts a basic substrate - specificity for paracaspases and metacaspases . indeed , a p1 arginine - specific substrate cleavage has recently been demonstrated for several plant metacaspases ( vercammen et al ., 2004 ). this led us to evaluate the role of specific arginine residues in the malt1 - mediated cleavage of a20 . a20 consists of an n - terminal otu domain and a c - terminal domain containing 7 zinc finger structures ( wertz et al . 2004 ). based on the molecular weights of the n - terminal p50 and c - terminal p37 proteolytic fragments of a20 that were generated by malt1 , a20 cleavage was predicted to take place between its first and second zinc finger ( fig8 , panel a ). within this linker region , three arginine residues can be found . in order to evaluate the potential cleavage of a20 at these sites , we generated a first a20 mutant in which both arginine 410 and 411 were mutated to alanine ( a20 - r410 / 411a ), as well as a second a20 mutant in which arginine 439 was mutated to alanine ( a20 - r439a ) ( fig8 , panel a ). we next investigated if these a20 mutants could still be processed by malt1 upon co - expression with malt1 / bcl10 in hek293t cells . bcl10 / malt1 - mediated processing of wild - type a20 or a20 - r410 / 411a was similar ( fig8 , panel b ). in contrast , we could not detect any bcl10 / malt1 - mediated processing of the a20 - r439a mutant . similar data were obtained when the a20 mutants were co - expressed with api2 - malt1 ( fig8 , panel c ). these results indicate that malt1 - mediated processing of a20 occurs at r439 in the linker region between the first and the second zinc finger , thereby physically separating its n - terminal otu domain and c - terminal zinc finger domain . we next wanted to investigate the functional consequences of malt1 - mediated processing of the nfκb inhibitor a20 . knockout as well as overexpression studies have shown that a20 functions as a negative regulator of nfκb activation in response to multiple stimuli ( beyaert et al ., 2000 ; lee et al ., 2000 ; boone et al ., 2004 ) but an inhibitory function in tcr - induced signaling has to our knowledge not yet been described . therefore , we first investigated whether a20 overexpression inhibits the nfκb dependent expression of a luciferase reporter gene in response to bcl10 or api2 - malt1 overexpression in hek293t cells . indeed , overexpression of a20 dose - dependently inhibited nfκb activation induced by over - expression of bcl10 or api2 - malt1 ( fig9 , panel a ). the inhibitory function of a20 on malt1 signaling was further confirmed by sirna - mediated knockdown of a20 expression in jurkat cells , after which the effect on tcr - induced expression of the nfκb - dependent il - 2 gene was investigated . compared to control - sirna ( ci ) transfected cells , cells transfected with a20 - sirna ( ai ) produced significantly higher amounts of il - 2 in response to stimulation with anti - cd3 / anti - cd28 or pma / ionomycin ( fig9 , panel b ). identical results were obtained with another set of sirna molecules targeting a20 . as these results establish a20 as a negative regulator of nfκb activation in response to tcr signaling , we went on to evaluate the effect of malt1 - mediated cleavage of a20 on its nfκb inhibitory function . we first compared the effect of overexpression of respectively wild type a20 and the non - cleavable a20 - r439a mutant on bcl10 , api2 - malt1 and pma induced nfκb activation in hek293t cells . a20 - r439a still inhibited nfκb activation in response to all these stimuli , and was even slightly more effective than wild - type a20 ( fig9 , panel c ). these results indicate that a20 cleavage is not required for its nfκb inhibitory function but rather could lead to its inactivation . to further investigate the latter assumption , we also analyzed the nfκb inhibiting potential of the individual a20p50 and a20p37 fragments that result from malt1 - mediated processing of a20 . in contrast to full length a20 , overexpression of the n - terminal a20p50 fragment had no inhibitory effect on bcl10 , api2 - malt1 and pma induced nfκb activation ( fig9 , panel c ). the c - terminal a20p37 fragment still inhibited nfκb activation , although much less efficient than full length a20 . although this suggests that malt1 - mediated processing of a20 diminishes its nfκb inhibitory function , we wanted to evaluate a possible synergistic nfκb inhibitory effect of the p50 and p37 fragments of a20 . when we co - expressed both fragments and analyzed their joined nfκb inhibitory potential , we could not detect any contribution of the n - terminal fragment to the nfκb inhibiting effect of a20p37 ( fig9 , panel c ). these results , as well as our observation that the endogenous a20p37 fragment is rapidly degraded after its generation , let us to conclude that malt1 - mediated processing of a20 considerably compromises its nfκb inhibitory function . previous data have shown that a proteolytically inactive malt1 - c464a mutant can still activate iκb kinases in an in vitro reconstitution experiment ( sun et al ., 2004 ), indicating that the proteolytic activity of malt1 is not essential for malt1 - induced nfκb activation . however , taking into account our finding that malt1 proteolytically inactivates an nfκb inhibitory protein , one would expect a more quantitative difference between wild type malt1 and malt1 - c464a induced nfκb activation . indeed , less efficient nfκb activation by the catalytically inactive malt1 mutant was previously already reported by others ( uren et al ., 2000 ; lucas et al ., 2001 ). to confirm these data , we first compared the potential of api2 - malt1 or api2 - malt1 - c464a over - expression to activate the expression of an nfκb dependent luciferase reporter gene in jurkat cells . whereas both api2 - malt1 and api2 - malt1 - c464a were able to activate nfκb , the response was much lower upon overexpression of the proteolytically inactive api2 / malt1 mutant ( fig1 , panel a ), which is consistent with the absence of a20 cleavage in the latter case . similarly , stable overexpression of wild type malt1 enhanced the nfκb dependent expression of il - 2 in response to pma / ionomycin much more potently than overexpression of malt1 - c464a , consistent with the specific cleavage of a20 and the higher nfκb activation by wild type malt1 ( fig1 , panel b ). inhibition of the malt1 proteolytic activity by a . thaliana serpin based on the similarity of the malt1 proteolytic action and that of plant metacaspases ( vercammen et al ., 2004 ) the possible inhibitory action of a . thaliana serpin ( at1g47710 ) and its ikla - 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