An antagonist of dishevelled protein-protein interaction suppresses β-catenin-dependent tumor cell growth

Recent progress in the development of inhibitors of protein-protein interactions has opened the door for developing drugs that act by novel and selective mechanisms. Building on that work, we designed a small-molecule inhibitor of the Wnt signaling pathway, which is aberrantly activated across a wide range of human tumors. The compound, named FJ9, disrupts the interaction between the Frizzed-7 Wnt receptor and the PDZ domain of Dishevelled, down-regulating canonical Wnt signaling and suppressing tumor cell growth. The antitumorigenic effects of FJ9 were pronounced, including induction of apoptosis in human cancer cell lines and tumor growth inhibition in a mouse xenograft model. FJ9 is thus among the first non-peptide inhibitors to show therapeutic efficacy through disruption of PDZ protein-protein interactions.