Our previous results from quantitative real-time PCR indicated that the expressions of NEU1, NEU3, and NEU4 are readily detectable but expression of NEU2 is hardly detectable in human tissues (
30). To determine whether NEU2 is actually expressed in humans, we attempted to clone the cDNA, because NEU2 has been characterized only using a genomic clone constructed by ligation of two genomic fragment sequences (
17). A NEU2 cDNA clone was obtained from a cDNA synthesized from poly(A)
+ RNA from the human brain as the template by PCR and was employed for preparation of the NEU2 enzyme protein. Consistent with our previous data, the expression levels of four sialidases were found to be markedly different. The endogenous levels of four sialidases were compared with one another as they were measured quantitatively using standard curves of respective cDNAs; those from the brain and lung are shown in Fig.
1. NEU1, known as a target gene for sialidosis, was expressed at the highest level, followed by NEU3 and NEU4, which were generally expressed at 1/10 or 1/20 of the level of NEU1. Expression of NEU2 was observed at extremely low levels, being at most only 1/4,000 to 1/10,000 that of NEU1 in several tissues.
To obtain preparations of all four enzymes, we transiently transfected the respective expression plasmids into 293T cells. The cell homogenates and the enzymes, highly purified by FLAG peptide elution through FLAG affinity chromatography (Fig.
2A), were assayed for sialidase activity in the presence of oseltamivir phosphate, oseltamivir carboxylate (Toronto Research Chemicals Inc., ON, Canada), or zanamivir (
26). Considering the substrate specificity, the substrates exogenously added routinely were 4MU-NeuAc for NEU1, NEU2, and NEU4 and the ganglioside GM3 for NEU3, because the former three can preferentially hydrolyze 4MU-NeuAc and NEU3 acts almost specifically on gangliosides (
15). Due to the broad specificity of NEU4, the activity was also assayed here with GM3 and 4MU-NeuAc to exclude the effects of differences in the substrate. After 15 to 30 min of incubation, the released 4MU and sialic acids were determined using a fluorometer and using fluorometric high-performance liquid chromatography, respectively. The 50% inhibitory concentration (IC
50) of each compound was calculated by plotting the decrease in activity against the log of the agent concentration. Oseltamivir phosphate did not affect any of the human sialidases (data not shown), since the prodrug osetamivir is expected to be ineffective in vitro, and oseltamivir carboxylate also showed no appreciable inhibition of the sialidases even at the concentration of 1 mM (Table
1). Only the activity of NEU2 appeared to be inhibited, but with a very high IC
50. In contrast, oseltamivir carboxylate was fully active against the influenza virus sialidases, with IC
50s in the nanomolar range under the conditions described in Materials and Methods. In addition, a nonselective sialidase inhibitor, NeuAc2en, showed clear inhibition in the micromolar range. While zanamivir did cause substantial inhibition of the human sialidases, the effects were much less marked than those in testing against the viral enzymes. NEU2 and NEU3 seemed to be more susceptible than the other two sialidases to zanamivir. Interestingly, the IC
50 was the lowest for NEU3, which is expressed abundantly in the brain and is colocalized in the plasma membrane with its substrate gangliosides. The
Km and
Ki values of the compounds for human sialidases were then compared using the homogenates (Table
2). Zanamivir was less inhibitory against NEU1 and NEU4, with
Ki values approximately 300- and 20-fold higher, respectively, than against NEU3. On the other hand, the
Ki value of oseltamivir carboxylate for NEU2 was much higher than that of zanamivir. To confirm these results, NEU2 and NEU3, which were found in this experiment to be a little more sensitive to the drugs than the other enzymes, were then purified by FLAG tag affinity chromatography. The final enzyme fractions were determined to be apparently homogeneous by SDS-PAGE (Fig.
2A). The specific activities of the purified fractions were 1,906 ± 659 U/μg protein for NEU2 and 934 ± 183 U/μg protein for NEU3. The
Kcat values calculated were 22.92 ± 8.0/s for NEU2 and 13.0 ± 2.4/s for NEU3. The
Ki values of oseltamivir carboxylate and zanamivir for purified NEU2 were 8,373 ± 1,491 and 11.2 ± 0.89 μM, respectively, and the
Km toward 4MU-NeuAc was 1,865 ± 285 μM. For NEU3, the
Ki of zanamivir was 5.12 ± 1.12 μM and the
Km 99.4 ± 15.2 mM with the GM3 substrate. These values are similar to those obtained with the homogenates as the enzyme sources, as shown in Table
2. The enzymes were assayed with increasing concentrations of substrates in the presence or absence of the drugs, and the kinetic data indicated the drug to be a competitive inhibitor, as expected. It should be noted that the
Ki value of oseltamivir carboxylate for NEU2 was much greater in this study (8,373 ± 1,491 μM) than that (432 μM) reported by Li et al. (
11).