Multiplexed Gel-based ABPP Strategy for Target-agnostic Serine Hydrolase Inhibitor Screening

Abstract

Serine hydrolases (SHs) represent a functionally defined enzyme class with significant roles in human physiology, yet many of the approximately 240 human SH’s lack selective chemical inhibitors required for functional validation. To address this, we developed a medium throughput screening platform based on multiplexed gel-based activity-based protein profiling (ABPP). Using mouse brain proteome as a source, we performed a target-agnostic screen of 1,664 covalent compounds, leading to the identification of three micromolar-potent fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) inhibitors featuring urea warheads and one epoxide-based inhibitor targeting an unannotated protein. An α/β-hydrolase domain-containing protein 2 (ABHD2) interaction was identified via chemical proteomics, which was validated with overexpression studies in U2OS cells. While the current approach is biased toward metabolic SHs and constrained by gel resolution, it provides a scalable workflow to facilitate the discovery of selective hits and mechanism-of-action studies for underexplored proteins.