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Niko Klink

@nikolasklink.bsky.social

360 followers 330 following 24 posts

Chemical Biology & drug discovery @Max Planck Dortmund | All things Ubiquitin and bifunctionals @Gersch Lab.

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Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · Aug 11

Weta workshop?

Reposted by Niko Klink

Hellerschmied Lab @hellerschmiedlab.bsky.social · Jul 15

Very happy to see our contribution to a better understanding of Hsp70/90 #chaperones online! Congrats and a big thank you to all co-authors, collaborators and reviewers! #proteostasis @poepsel-lab.bsky.social @crc1430.bsky.social @unidue-zmb.bsky.social

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology @natsmb.nature.com · Jul 14

New online: Conformational plasticity of a BiP–GRP94 chaperone complex

Conformational plasticity of a BiP–GRP94 chaperone complex

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, Published online: 14 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s41594-025-01619-0BiP–glucose-regulated protein 94 chaperones are critical to the proper folding of secretory and transmembrane proteins. Brenner et al. provide biochemical and structural insight into a conserved mechanism of chaperone cooperation underlying this quality control process.

Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · Jul 10

The degrader is much much worse in cellular permeability than the inhibitor (we tested), but is just so potent at forming a stable ternary complex and inducing degradation that we just need less for full degradation!

Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · Jul 9

Thanks alot, much appreciated, and thanks for the feedback! Would you like to see inhibitor go down or degrader go up with the concentration? Equimolarity is a bit iffy to compare here, since they have such drastically different membrane permeability

Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · Jul 6

And wishing you a full and speedy recovery!

Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · Jul 6

Ah now I understand your question correctly, i thought you meant something different! Sorry to hear that. I dont know enough about long term treatment of Kras inhibitors to answer that question truthfully, sorry!

Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · Jul 6

Yes, it will very much hinder degradation! The inhibitor has higher cell membrane permeability and will outcompete the Degrader binding site

Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · Jul 6

Thank you! By becoming available later you mean Treating cells with inhibitor first then adding degrader at later time points?

Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · Jul 5

Lastly, a huge thank you to my supervisor Dr. @maltegersch.bsky.social for his guidance and support, as well as the entire Gersch team.
I am very glad to share this story, but even more excited for whats to come in the (near) future, so stay tuned, we are just getting started!
#TPD #PROTAC #DUB

Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · Jul 5

Big thanks also to Dr. Bikash Adhikari and Prof. Elmar Wolf from @wolflab23.bsky.social, as well as Dr. @martinschwalm.bsky.social for bringing their expertise to this project, @imprs-lm.bsky.social from the MPI Dortmund for the excellent support and everyone else who contributed to the prokect!

Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · Jul 5

This work would not have been possible without my amazing co-first authors Dr. Sebastian Urban and Dr. Med. Johanna Seier and everyone in this highly interdisciplinary team from the @crc1430.bsky.social and beyond.

Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · Jul 5

Taking these now to our Model Systems (PDAC and melanoma), not only shows highly selective degradation of USP7 by our PROTACs (criteria for matched pair fulfilled!), but also striking differences between inhibitor and degrader treated cells. These differences also occur in many phenotypic assays!

Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · Jul 5

After making a bunch of degraders (most not shown here), we arrive at NK250 and NK266 ("Kurt Cubane"), two highly potent USP7 degraders in HiBiT and immune-based assays. NK250, is a faster degrader which we could correlate to its ability to form a stable ternary complex between USP7 and VHL.

Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · Jul 5

We introduce NK192, a potent USP7 inhibitor of the widely used hydroxypiperidine scaffold. Converting it through the available exit vector to a biotin probe showed proteome-wide highly selective binding to USP7, fulfilling our criteria for the inhibitor side of the matched chemical pairs.

Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · Jul 5

To enable their systematic discovery, we addressed this urgent need with matched chemical pairs of DUB inhibitor and #degraders by focusing on USP7 as a case study. By using potent and selective modulators, we aimed to dissect phenotypes induced by inhibitors and degraders of USP7 in solid cancers.

Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · Jul 5

#Deubiquitinases (DUBs), key regulators of ubiquitin signaling, have been increasingly recognized for functions beyond rescuing substrate proteins from proteasomal degradation. Due to a lack of selective chemical tools within the DUB space, finding these functions has proven to be very challenging.

Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · Jul 5

Really excited to share the first chapter of my PhD as a preprint titled: Targeted degradation of USP7 in solid cancer cells reveals disparate effects of deubiquitinase inhibition vs. acute protein depletion: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... If that sounds interesting to you, small tweetorial below👇

Targeted degradation of USP7 in solid cancer cells reveals disparate effects of deubiquitinase inhibition vs. acute protein depletion

Proteolysis-targeting chimeras (PROTACs) co-op the ubiquitin system for targeted protein degradation, creating opportunities to interrogate cellular functions of proteins through "chemical knockdown"....

www.biorxiv.org

Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · May 5

We hope that our work paves the way for the next generation of molecules targeting USP30 and fighting neurodegenerative diseases, and hope that this strategy will soon be applied to other DUBs!

Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · May 5

Huge shoutout to Nafizul Kazi for this incredible tour de force on tireless protein engineering and thorough biochemical assay characterizations, @gallantkai.bsky.social and Gian Marvin Kipka for the beautiful cellular work and @maltegersch.bsky.social for amazing guidance and supervision.

Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · May 5

Very excited to share that our work on Parkinson's target USP30 has been published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology! By combining soluble DUB-domains onto USP30, we for the first time achieved co-crystallization with a small molecule (NK036) without Nanobodies! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Chimeric deubiquitinase engineering reveals structural basis for specific inhibition of the mitophagy regulator USP30 - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology

Kazi et al. report the crystal structure of the mitochondrial deubiquitinase USP, a clinical stage Parkinson’s disease drug target, in complex with a specific inhibitor. The authors delineate a framew...

Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · Mar 25

Absolutely fantastic work, congrats to the whole team!

Reposted by Niko Klink

Cynthia Wolberger @cwolberger.bsky.social · Mar 21

Wow. This is really stunning . www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

In-cell architecture of the mitochondrial respiratory chain

Mitochondria regenerate adenosine triphosphate (ATP) through oxidative phosphorylation. This process is carried out by five membrane-bound complexes collectively known as the respiratory chain, workin...

www.science.org

Reposted by Niko Klink

Mike Cohen @michaelnadbio.bsky.social · Feb 25

I'm super excited to share our study in collaboration with @jnpruneda.bsky.social, published today in @embojournal.org! We show that PARPs are modified with a non-canonical ester-linked mono-ADP-ribosylated ubiquitin species for the first time in cells: www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

Ubiquitin is directly linked via an ester to protein-conjugated mono-ADP-ribose | The EMBO Journal

imageimageCertain E3 ligases have been found to ubiquitylate hydroxyl groups on free NAD+ and ADP-ribose in vitro, but the in vivo occurrence of this dual post-translational modification has remained ...

www.embopress.org

Reposted by Niko Klink

Jakob Farnung @jakobfarnung.bsky.social · Jan 29

🎉Super excited to share our story on how the substrate receptor FBXO31 functions as a quality control factor by recognizing amides. This has been an amazing collaboration between Bode lab and @jcornlab.bsky.social. Special shutout goes to @matthiasmuhar.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

C-terminal amides mark proteins for degradation via SCF–FBXO31 - Nature

SCF–FBXO31 scans proteins for C-terminal amidation and marks them for subsequent proteasomal degradation.

Niko Klink @nikolasklink.bsky.social · Dec 23

I dont recall where I read it, but dont These have rather Poor affinity for CRBN compared to the usual suspects?