Inkjet printing-based β-secretase fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) assay for screening of potential β-secretase inhibitors of Alzheimer's disease.

Amyloid-β (Aβ) is generated by proteolytic processing of amyloid precursor protein (APP) by beta-secretase (BACE-1) and gamma-secretase. Amyloid-β is responsible for the formation of senile plaques in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Consequently, inhibition of β-secretase (BACE-1), a rate-limiting enzyme in the production of Aβ, constitutes an attractive therapeutic approach to the treatment of AD. This paper reports an inkjet printing-based fluorescence assay for high throughput screening of β-secretase inhibitors achieved by employing a BACE-1 FRET substrate (Rh-Glu-Val-Asn-Leu-Asp-Ala-Glu-Phe-Lys-Quencher). This peptide substrate is known to be a readily available and suitable substrate for proteolytic activity, and it has high affinity to BACE-1. The BACE-1 peptide substrate printed on parchment paper was effectively cleaved by BACE-1, which was printed on the same spot. The amount of enzyme and substrate required for this inkjet printing-based BACE-1 assay can be less than 1.4ⅹ103, permitting the evaluation of inhibitor activity with femtomolar potency. The inkjet-printing-based BACE-1 inhibitory assay revealed inhibitory effects of inhibitor IV and STA on BACE-1 with an IM50 of 1.00 × 10-15 mol and 1.01 × 10-14 mol, respectively. These data confirm that both BACE-1 inhibitors (inhibitor IV and STA) actively inhibited the BACE-1 proteolysis of BACE-1 substrate on parchment paper. It important to note that the number of mole of BACE-1-substrate and enzyme utilized in the printing-based enzymatic assay are 1.4ⅹ103 smaller than the amount used in the conventional well-plate assay. The inkjet printing-based inhibitory assay constitutes a versatile high throughput technique and the IM50 values of the inhibitors were obtained with satisfactory reproducibility, suggesting that this inkjet-printing BACE-1 inhibitory assay could be quite suitable for the screening of new potential BACE-1 inhibitors for AD.