Immune checkpoints are crucial in the maintenance of antitumor immune responses. The activation or blockade of immune checkpoints is dependent on the interactions between receptors and ligands; such interactions can provide inhibitory or stimulatory signals, including the enhancement or suppression of T-cell proliferation, differentiation, and/or cytokine secretion. B-and T-lymphocyte attenuator (BTLA) is a lymphoid-specific cell surface receptor which is present on T-cells and interacts with herpes virus entry mediator (HVEM), which is present on tumor cells. The binding of HVEM to BTLA triggers an inhibitory signal which attenuates the immune response. This feature is interesting for studying the molecular interactions between HVEM and BTLA, as they may be targeted for novel immunotherapies. This work was based on the crystal structure of the BTLA/HVEM complex showing that BTLA binds the N-terminal cysteine-rich domain of HVEM. We investigated the amino acid sequence of HVEM and used molecular modeling methods to develop inhibitors of the BTLA/HVEM interaction. We synthesized novel compounds and determined their ability to interact with the BTLA protein and inhibit the formation of the BTLA/HVEM complex. Our results suggest that the HVEM (14-39) peptide is a potent inhibitor of the formation of the BTLA/HVEM protein complex.

We report a case of an uveal melanoma patient with GNAQ p.Gly48Leu who responded to MEK inhibition. At the time of the molecular analysis, the pathogenicity of the mutation was unknown. A tridimensional structural analysis showed that Gαq can adopt active and inactive conformations that lead to substantial changes, involving three important switch regions. Our molecular modelling study predicted that GNAQ p.Gly48Leu introduces new favorable interactions in its active conformation, whereas little or no impact is expected in its inactive form. This strongly suggests that GNAQ p.Gly48Leu is a possible tumor-activating driver mutation, consequently triggering the MEK pathway. In addition, we also found an FGFR4 p.Cys172Gly mutation, which was predicted by molecular modelling analysis to lead to a gain of function by impacting the Ig-like domain 2 folding, which is involved in FGF binding and increases the stability of the homodimer. Based on these analyses, the patient received the MEK inhibitor trametinib with a lasting clinical benefit. This work highlights the importance of molecular modelling for personalized oncology.

We have extracted an extensive collection of recurrent structural motifs (RSMs), which consist of sequentially non-contiguous structural motifs (4-6 residues), each of which appears with very similar conformation in three or more mutually unrelated protein structures. We find that the proteins in our set are covered to a substantial extent by the recurrent non-contiguous structural motifs, especially the helix and strand regions. Computational alanine scanning calculations indicate that the average folding free energy changes upon alanine mutation for most types of non-alanine residues are higher for amino acids that are present in recurrent structural motifs than for amino acids that are not. The non-alanine amino acids that are most common in the recurrent structural motifs, i.e., phenylalanine, isoleucine, leucine, valine and tyrosine and the less abundant methionine and tryptophan, have the largest folding free energy changes. This indicates that the recurrent structural motifs, as we define them, describe recurrent structural patterns that are important for protein stability. In view of their properties, such structural motifs are potentially useful for inter-residue contact prediction and protein structure refinement.