Screening Derivatized Peptide Libraries for Tight Binding Inhibitors to Carbonic Anhydrase II by Electrospray Ionization-Mass Spectrometry

This paper describes the use of electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) to screen two libraries of soluble compounds to search for tight binding inhibitors for carbonic anhydrase II (EC 4.2.1.1). The two libraries, H2NO2SC6H4C(O)NH-AA1-AA2-C(O)NHCH2CH2CO2H (1), where AA1 and AA2 are l-amino acids (library size: 289 compounds) or d-amino acids (256 compounds), were constructed by attaching tripeptides to the carboxyl group of 4-carboxybenzenesulfonamide. Screening of both libraries yielded, as the tightest binding inhibitor, compound 1 (AA1 = AA2 = l-Leu; binding constant Kb = 1.4 × 108 M-1). The ability of ESI-MS to estimate simultaneously the relative binding affinities of a protein to soluble ligands in a library, if general, should be useful in drug development.