Characterization of the cellular activity of PDE 4 inhibitors using two novel PDE 4 reporter cell lines.

We report here the generation and pharmacological characterization of two novel PDE 4B1 and PDE 4D3 reporter cell lines. Intracellular cAMP levels are monitored in these cells by a cAMP-sensitive biosensor. We used the recombinant PDE 4B1 and PDE 4D3 reporter cell lines to characterize the cellular effects of various competitive and allosteric PDE 4 inhibitors. In addition, we compared the cellular activity of these PDE 4 inhibitors with the in vitro inhibition of full-length PDE 4D3 and a truncated enzyme comprising the PDE 4D3 catalytic domain. Two different groups of PDE 4 inhibitors could be identified. The first group, including competitive inhibitors like roflumilast, cilomilast and piclamilast, shows similar in vitro activity on full-length and truncated PDE 4D3 and comparably low cellular activity. The second group, including the allosteric inhibitors PMNPQ, D159153, and D159404, shows much better inhibition of full-length versus truncated PDE 4D3. In addition, these compounds show high cellular activity. Our data obtained with the prototype PDE 4 inhibitor rolipram show that rolipram has properties intermediate between the two groups. The results imply that these novel PDE 4 reporter cell lines are well-suited for the characterization of the cellular activity of PDE 4 inhibitors and may also support a better understanding of the complex PDE 4 pharmacology.