A Proteasome Specific Binding Assay for Quantitation of Constitutive and Immunoproteasome Active Sites.

The ubiquitin-proteasome pathway constitutes a major intracellular system for protein degradation. Substrates for this pathway include misfolded or unassembled proteins as well as short-lived regulatory proteins that play key roles in signaling and proliferative pathways. The majority of cell types express the standard, or “constitutive”, form of the proteasome, while cells of the immune system also express the immunoproteasome, a form of the proteasome that contributes to class I major histocompatibility complex restricted antigen processing. Non-immune cells can also express immunoproteasome in response to interferon gamma exposure. The immunoproteasome retains the same structural subunits as the constitutive proteasome but has three different catalytic subunits. The catalytic activities of both forms of the proteasome have been traditionally characterized with purified enzyme preparations and fluorogenic peptide substrates. Such fluorogenic peptide substrates suffer from two characteristics that limit their utility in measuring proteasome activities in complex cell or tissue lysates: 1) they cannot distinguish proteasome activities from other proteolytic activities within the lysate; and 2) they can not distinguish between constitutive and immunoproteasome activities. We have developed an ELISA-based proteasome-specific binding (PSB) assay that can detect and quantify the chymotryptic-like proteasome active sites of the beta-5 constitutive proteasome subunit and the LMP7 immunoproteasome subunit. The assay utilizes a biotin-modified peptide epoxyketone probe that covalently and irreversibly interacts with the active site threonine present in catalytic proteasome subunits. Once bound to the probe, the labeled subunits are recovered on streptavidin-conjugated beads and detected with subunit-specific antibodies. The PSB assay is both quantitative and sensitive. We have demonstrated that the assay is capable of measuring constitutive proteasome and immunoproteasome binding activity in human whole blood and peripheral blood mononuclear cell preparations, respectively. In experiments with the epoxyketone-based proteasome inhibitor PR-171, the dose response for inhibition of the PSB assay is equivalent to that measured with a conventional fluorogenic peptide proteasome substrate. In addition, the PSB assay can effectively measure the level of PR-171 mediated inhibition of both the constitutive and immunoproteasome in the RPMI-8226 multiple myeloma cell line that co-expresses both proteasome types. Thus, the PSB assay overcomes the limitations of conventional fluorogenic substrate-based proteasome activity assays when applied to cell or tissue lysates that contain multiple proteolytic activities or mixtures of constitutive and immunoproteasomes. Potential applications of the PSB assay include the measurement of the pharmacodynamic response to proteasome inhibitors and the evaluation of constitutive vs. immunoproteasome selectivity of inhibitors both in vitro and in vivo.