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Profiling crystal engineered ligands for targeting treatment resistant androgen receptors
Preprint   Open access

Profiling crystal engineered ligands for targeting treatment resistant androgen receptors

Avan Colah, Charles Ezekiel, Sára Ferková, Pierre-Luc Boudreault, Leonard MacGillivray and William Ricke
bioRxiv
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Preprints
05/05/2026
DOI: 10.64898/2026.05.01.721995
url
https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.05.01.721995View
Preprint (Author's original) This preprint has not been evaluated by subject experts through peer review. Preprints may undergo extensive changes and/or become peer-reviewed journal articles. Open Access

Abstract

Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the principal contributors to health burden in the aging male population. PCa develops through dysregulation of androgen receptor (AR) signaling pathways. Despite improvements in diagnostic techniques and interventions, no pharmacological measures with long term efficacy have been established once PCa advances to castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). To circumvent this issue, tetra-aryl cyclobutanes (CBs) have been proposed as structurally distinct compounds with a mechanism of action differing from traditional androgen receptor signaling inhibitor (ARSIs). Here, we apply principles of crystal engineering and solid state synthesis to expand the class of CBs through strategic derivatization. The synthesis of the CB occurs quantitatively, producing no side products and eliminating the need for product purification. We demonstrate how head-to-tail stacking interactions of halo-pyrimidine rings can be exploited to stack and align unsymmetrical alkenes to undergo [2+2] photodimerization to generate the CB in the solid state. We examine the structure-function relationships of CBs in vitro by profiling AR mediated transcriptional activity, receptor translocation, and cell viability. Moreover, we explore and identify putative binding interactions within CB/AR complexes and establish an adaptive ligand-binding potential using molecular docking platforms. In total, our data suggests that CBs have unexploited therapeutic potential in CRPC and that green chemistry and crystal engineering principles offer a unique route to generating these drug candidates.

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