Covalently Engineered Nanobody Chimeras for Targeted Membrane Protein Degradation

Abstract

The targeted degradation of membrane proteins would afford an attractive and general strategy for treating various diseases that remain difficult with the current proteolysis-targeting chimera (PROTAC) methodology. We herein report a covalent nanobody-based PROTAC strategy, termed GlueTAC, for targeted membrane protein degradation with high specificity and efficiency. We first established a mass-spectrometry-based screening platform for the rapid development of a covalent nanobody (GlueBody) that allowed proximity-enabled cross-linking with surface antigens on cancer cells. By conjugation with a cell-penetrating peptide and a lysosomal-sorting sequence, the resulting GlueTAC chimera triggered the internalization and degradation of programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1), which provides a new avenue to target and degrade cell-surface proteins.