Illuminating the Kinome: NanoBRET Target Engagement Technology in the Spotlight

Updated November 21, 2023

In the life of a cell, phosphorylation of proteins is an everyday occurrence. The transfer of a phosphate group, from a molecule such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP) to a specific functional group on a protein, is catalyzed by a protein kinase. The vast majority of protein kinases are classified as either serine/threonine kinases or tyrosine kinases; over 500 kinase genes have been identified in the human genome (1).

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Protein phosphorylation is a key step in most cell signaling pathways, in response to external or internal stimuli, and it is not surprising that dysregulation of these pathways contributes to a variety of cancers. The first oncogene to be characterized was SRC, a gene that encodes a tyrosine kinase (reviewed in 2). With more kinases being implicated in oncogenic pathways, significant drug discovery efforts have been devoted to developing and characterizing inhibitors of protein kinases. These efforts have accelerated ever since the first targeted small-molecule kinase inhibitor, imatinib, received US FDA approval in 2001 for the treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia (3). Since that time, many more protein kinase inhibitors have received FDA approval, with 67 small-molecule inhibitors listed as of September 2021.

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Customized Kinase Selectivity Profiling Just Got Easier

11296971-DC-CR-KinaseOff-target activities of target compounds can become costly if they aren’t discovered until late in the drug research and discovery process. Therefore, knowing the inhibitory profile of your test compounds across a broad collection of kinases as quickly as possible is highly desirable.

However, screening against many kinases at once requires a universal platform that is still sensitive enough to detect inhibitor activity and assess selectivity and potency on kinases of different classes. The luminescent ADP-Glo™ Kinase Assay is a universal platform that measures kinase activity by quantifying the amount of ADP produced during a kinase reaction.

We have used the ADP-Glo™ Chemistry to develop highly sensitive assays for more than 170 kinases across the human kinome and further enhanced the assays for ease-of-use by developing the Kinase Selectivity Profiling Systems. These systems provide an easy-to-use, reliable platform for kinase inhibitor profiling in house.

And even better, we now provide an online Kinase Profiling System Designer so that you can design a custom Kinase Selectivity Profiling System to fit your exact experimental needs. Simply drag and drop the combination of kinases you need to create an 8-kinase strip and submit your order. Continue reading “Customized Kinase Selectivity Profiling Just Got Easier”