Discovery of Carbohydrate Sulfotransferase Inhibitors from a Kinase-Directed Library

Chemical tools for biological investigations of carbohydrate sulfotransferases—a class of enzymes that has been characterized only recently—have been developed by using a small-molecule library-screening approach. The inhibitor screen included 139 compounds comprising selected structures from purine libraries as well as commercially available protein-kinase inhibitors and representatives from other kinase-inhibitor families. Like kinases, carbohydrate sulfotransferases have attracted significant interest because of their roles in a variety of disease states including chronic inflammation and tumor metastasis.