Solway, Julian

In pathologies of the heart, blood vessels, and airways, and in cancer as well, the ultimate therapeutic target is often modulation of cellular contractile force. For discovering new therapies, drug screening technologies typically use biochemical or structural surrogates for contractile force rather than contractile force itself. Because such approaches are indirect, some hits are false while other potential hits could be missed. To fill this gap, we developed a new high‐throughput method that utilizes cellular contractile force directly as the reporter ‐‐called contractile force screening (CFS)‐‐ and established feasibility of CFS in the context of drug discovery in asthma. During an acute asthma attack, contractile forces generated by airway smooth muscle cells act to constrict the airway and thus obstruct airflow. To dilate constricted airways, asthma patients use bronchodilators to reduce these contractile forces and thus allow the airway to open more fully, but currently available bronchodilator medications often fail to relax that muscle sufficiently, especially in severe asthma. To address this unmet need for more effective bronchodilator medications, we implemented CFS to evaluate 10,000 small molecule compounds selected randomly from the Chembridge DIVERset® library. Acrylamide gels were made in 96‐well plates and fluorescent markers and collagen were coated onto gel surfaces. Upon each gel we cultured primary human airway smooth muscle (HASM) cells to near confluence. Drug effects were quantified as the ‘force response ratio’, namely, the ratio of the contractile forces before and after drug addition. By screening mixtures of 8 compounds simultaneously, we were able to evaluate 2000 compounds per week in quadruplicate. After retesting individual compounds from initially positives, we identified 2 individual compounds that relaxed HASM cells in a dose‐dependent and a non‐toxic manner. The mechanism of action is still under investigation but we found that these compounds work independent of cAMP. CFS provides a convenient, rapid, and inexpensive platform for drug discovery based upon a physiological endpoint, namely, cell contractile force. Furthermore, CFS technology has the potential to become a new high‐content assay for drug discovery in any disease process in which cellular contractile force plays a central role. Support or Funding Information NIH P50HL107171 (CADET phase I), R01EY019696 (Eye BRP), NRF GRN (NRF‐2013S1A2A2035518)

We previously demonstrated that after several days of serum deprivation about one-sixth of confluent cultured canine tracheal myocytes acquire an elongated, structurally and functionally contractile phenotype. These myocytes demonstrated significant shortening on ACh exposure. To evaluate the mechanism by which these myocytes acquire responsiveness to ACh, we assessed receptor-Ca2+ coupling using fura 2-AM fluorescence imaging and muscarinic receptor expression using Western analysis. Cells were grown to confluence in 10% fetal bovine serum and then maintained for 7–13 days in serum-free medium. A fraction of serum-deprived cells exhibited reproducible intracellular Ca2+ mobilization in response to ACh that was uniformly absent from airway myocytes before serum deprivation. The Ca2+ response to 10− 4 M ACh was ablated by inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (IP3) receptor blockade using 10− 6 M xestospongin C but not by removal of extracellular Ca2+. Also, 10− 7 M atropine or 10− 7 M 4-diphenylacetoxy- N-methylpiperidine completely blocked the response to ACh, but intracellular Ca2+ mobilization was not ablated by 10− 6 M pirenzepine or 10− 6 M methoctramine. In contrast, 10− 5 M bradykinin (BK) was without effect in these ACh-responsive myocytes. Interestingly, myocytes that did not respond to ACh demonstrated robust increases in intracellular Ca2+ on exposure to 10− 5 M BK that were blocked by removal of extracellular Ca2+ and were only modestly affected by IP3 receptor blockade. Serum deprivation increased the abundance of M3 receptor protein and of BK2 receptor protein by two- to threefold in whole cell lysates within 2 days of serum deprivation, whereas M2receptor protein fell by >75%. An increase in M3receptor abundance and restoration of M3 receptor-mediated Ca2+ mobilization occur concomitant with reacquisition of a contractile phenotype during prolonged serum deprivation. These data demonstrate plasticity in muscarinic surface receptor expression and function in a subpopulation of airway myocytes that show mutually exclusive physiological and pharmacological diversity with other cells in the same culture.