Salicylate, diflunisal and their metabolites inhibit CBP/p300 and exhibit anticancer activity
- Gladstone Institutes, United States
- University of Miami, United States
- University of Pennsylvania, United States
- National Cancer Institute, United States
Abstract
Salicylate and acetylsalicylic acid are potent and widely used anti-inflammatory drugs. They are thought to exert their therapeutic effects through multiple mechanisms, including the inhibition of cyclo-oxygenases, modulation of NF-κB activity, and direct activation of AMPK. However, the full spectrum of their activities is incompletely understood. Here we show that salicylate specifically inhibits CBP and p300 lysine acetyltransferase activity in vitro by direct competition with acetyl-Coenzyme A at the catalytic site. We used a chemical structure-similarity search to identify another anti-inflammatory drug, diflunisal, that inhibits p300 more potently than salicylate. At concentrations attainable in human plasma after oral administration, both salicylate and diflunisal blocked the acetylation of lysine residues on histone and non-histone proteins in cells. Finally, we found that diflunisal suppressed the growth of p300-dependent leukemia cell lines expressing AML1-ETO fusion protein in vitro and in vivo. These results highlight a novel epigenetic regulatory mechanism of action for salicylate and derivative drugs.
Article and author information
Author details
Reviewing Editor
- Ali Shilatifard, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, United States
Version history
- Received: August 26, 2015
- Accepted: May 26, 2016
- Accepted Manuscript published: May 31, 2016 (version 1)
- Accepted Manuscript updated: June 9, 2016 (version 2)
- Version of Record published: July 4, 2016 (version 3)
Copyright
© 2016, Shirakawa et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Salicylate, diflunisal and their metabolites inhibit CBP/p300 and exhibit anticancer activity
eLife 5:e11156.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.11156
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