Mechanistic Study of Potent Fluorinated EGFR Kinase Inhibitors with a Quinazoline Scaffold against L858R/T790M/C797S Resistance Mutation: Unveiling the Fluorine Substituent Cooperativity Effect on the Inhibitory Activity.

Fluorination has considerable potential with regard to the design of kinase inhibitors for anticarcinoma therapy. It was recently reported that fluorination increases the potency of inhibitors of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), mutations of which have been linked specifically to nonsmall-cell lung cancer. For the L858R/T790M/C797S triplet mutant (EGFR), a difluorinated inhibitor, , was found to have 4.23 times greater potency against the EGFR than an unfluorinated inhibitor, . This discovery necessitates a rational explanation for the underlying inhibitory mechanisms. Here, we apply multiple computational approaches to explore, validate, and differentiate the binding modes of and in the EGFR and investigate the cooperativity effect of fluorine substituents on the inhibitory activity. Our results showed that the EGFR in the presence of undergoes a series of conformational changes that favor inhibitor binding to both the active and allosteric sites. Further, the cooperativity effect of fluorine substituents is positive: the complex stability is increased by each additional fluorine substituent. Estimated binding free energies show good correlation with the experimental biological activity. Subsequently, the decomposition energy analysis revealed that the van der Waals interaction is the principal force contributing to variations in the binding affinities of and to the EGFR. Per-residue energy-based hierarchical clustering analysis suggests that three hot-spot residues, L718, K745, and D855, are the key in achieving optimal binding modes for with higher affinity in the EGFR compared to . This study provides a rationale for the superior EGFR-inhibitory potency exhibited by over , which is expected to be useful for the future rational structure-based design of novel EGFR inhibitors with improved potency and selectivity.