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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Making Drug Discovery More Efficient: Predicting Drug Side Effects in Early Screening Efforts

26911030-Laymans-KSPS-figure-WEB-R4Drug research and development is a complex and expensive process that begins with initial screening steps of candidate chemical compounds, and compounds that appear to have the desired potency against a specific cellular target or pathway are further evaluated. Candidate compounds that fail late in development or during clinical trials because of off-target effects are costly, and can be dangerous. Therefore drug developers not only need to ensure that a candidate compound is effective as a therapy, but also they need to predict any potential undesirable side effects due to off-target activities as early as possible in the drug discovery and development process. Continue reading “Making Drug Discovery More Efficient: Predicting Drug Side Effects in Early Screening Efforts”