Improvement of interlukin-18 aggregation and activity by replacement of
surface cysteine by serine
Abstract
Interleukin-18 has been proposed for cancer immunotherapy for a long
time. However, the presence of IL-18 binding protein (IL-18BP) and the
unstable form of IL-18 caused the low impact of this protein in human
clinical trials. To overcome this, we performed the mutagenesis
targeting surface cysteines (C38, C68, C76, and C127) on our modified
IL-18 to prevent intermolecular disulfide bond formation. The ORF of
wild-type, IL-18 DM and IL-18 DM1234 were synthesized and expressed in
E. coli. All IL-18 were refolded by step-wise dialysis and tested for
protein aggregation by ProteoStat protein aggregation assay. All
recombinant IL-18 were also investigated for activity by IFN-γ induction
assay. The structure of modified IL-18 was visualized by molecular
dynamic (MD) simulation. The results showed that IL-18 DM1234
demonstrated the lowest aggregation signal compared to others. This
protein also displayed higher activity than wild-type and IL-18 DM about
10 and 2.8 times, respectively. MD simulation revealed the binding site
I of IL-18 DM1234 was the part mostly affected by C-to-S substitution.
In conclusion, this is the first report for IL-18 that the modifications
by mutagenesis improved both activity and stability and this IL-18 may
be used for medical purposes in the future.