1. Division of Organ Transplantation and Immunology, Department of Surgery, Yale University School of Medicine, 310 Cedar St, New Haven, Connecticut 06510, USA
2. ^† Department of Chemistry, Harvard University, 12 Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA

Abstract

THE structurally novel macrolide FK506 (refs 1,2) has recently been demonstrated to have potent immunosuppressive activity^3–7 at concentrations several hundredfold lower than cyclosporin A (CsA). Cyclosporin A, a cyclic peptide, has found widespread clinical use in the prevention of graft rejection following bone marrow and organ transplantation⁸. The mechanisms of immunosuppression mediated by FK506 and CsA appear to be remarkably similar, suggesting that these unrelated structures act on a common receptor or on similar molecular targets, perhaps the CsA receptor, cyclophilin^9–11, which has recently been shown by Fischer etal.¹² and Takahashi etal.¹³ to have cis–trans peptidyl-prolyl isomerase activity. We have prepared an FK506 affinity matrix and purified a binding protein for FK506 from bovine thymus and from human spleen. This FK506-binding protein (FKBP) has a relative molecular mass (M_r) of 14,000(14K), a pi of 8.8–8.9, and does not cross-react with antisera against cyclophilin. The first 40 N-terminal residues of the bovine and 16 residues of the human FKBP were determined; the 16-residue fragments are identical to each other and unrelated to any known sequences. This protein catalyses the cis–trans isomerization of the proline amide in a tetrapeptide substrate and FK506 inhibits the action of this new isomerase. The FKBP and cyclophilin appear to be members of an emerging class of novel proteins that regulate T cell activation and other metabolic processes, perhaps by the recognition (and possibly the isomerization) of proline-containing epitopes in target proteins.