Isoform-targeted regulation of cardiac adenylyl cyclase

Numerous attempts have been made to develop strategies for regulating the intracellular cyclic AMP signal pharmacologically, with an intention to establish either new medical therapeutic methods or experimental tools. In the past decades, many pharmacological reagents have been identified that regulate this pathway at the level of the receptor, G protein, adenylyl cyclase, cyclic AMP, protein kinase A and phosphodiesterase. Since the cloning of adenylyl cyclase isoforms during the 1990s, investigators including ourselves have tried to find reagents that regulate the activity of this enzyme directly in an isoform-dependent manner. The ultimate goal of developing such reagents would be to regulate the cyclic AMP signal in an organ-dependent manner. Ourselves and other workers have reported that such reagents may vary from a simple cation to kinases. In a more recent study, using the results from crystallographic studies and computer-assisted drug design programs, we have identified subtype-selective regulators of adenylyl cyclase. Such regulators are mostly based upon forskolin, a diterpene compound obtained from Coleus forskolii, that acts directly on adenylyl cyclase to increase the intracellular levels of cyclic AMP. Similarly, novel reagents have been identified that inhibit a specific adenylyl cyclase isoform (e.g. type 5 adenylyl cyclase). Such reagents would potentially provide a new therapeutic strategy to treat hypertension, for example, as well as methods to selectively stimulate or inhibit this adenylyl cyclase isoform, which may be reminiscent of overexpression or knocking out of the cardiac adenylyl cyclase isoform by the use of a pharmacological method.