PMID: 24171479

Authors:

Lopez MS, Choy J, Peters U, Sos ML, Morgan DO, Shokat KM

Title:

Staurosporine-derived inhibitors broaden the scope of analog-sensitive kinase technology.

Journal:

J Am Chem Soc. 2013 Oct 30.

Abstract:

Analog-sensitive (AS) kinase technology is a powerful approach for studying phospho-signaling pathways in diverse organisms and physiological processes. The key feature of this technique is that a kinase-of-interest can be mutated to sensitize it to inhibitor analogs that do not target wild-type (WT) kinases. In theory, this enables specific inhibition of any kinase in cells and in mouse models of human disease. Typically these inhibitors are identified from a small library of mole-cules based on the pyrazolopyrimidine (PP) scaffold. However, we recently identified a subset of native human kinases, including the Ephrin A kinase family, that are sensitive to commonly used PP inhibitors. In an effort to develop a bioor-thogonal AS-kinase inhibitor and to extend this technique to PP-sensitive kinases we sought an alternative inhibitor scaf-fold. Here we report the structure-based design of synthetically tractable, potent, and extremely selective AS-kinase inhibitors based on the natural product staurosporine. We demonstrate that these molecules, termed staralogs, potently target AS kinases in cells and we employ X-ray crystallography to elucidate their mechanism of efficacy. Finally, we demon-strate that staralogs target AS mutants of PP-sensitive kinases at concentrations where there is little to no inhibition of na-tive human kinases. Thus, staralogs represent a new class of AS-kinase inhibitors and a core component of the chemical genetic tool kit for probing kinase-signaling pathways.