Kinase Inhibitor Profile for Human Nek1, Nek6, and Nek7 and Analysis of the Structural Basis for Inhibitor Specificity

• Main Authors: Eduardo Cruz Moraes, Gabriela Vaz Meirelles, Rodrigo Vargas Honorato, Tatiana de Arruda Campos Brasil de Souza, Edmarcia Elisa de Souza, Mario Tyago Murakami, Paulo Sergio Lopes de Oliveira, Jörg Kobarg
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2015-01-01
• Series: Molecules
• Subjects: drug discovery; compound screening; kinase assays; molecular modeling; molecular docking; ATP-competitive inhibitors; non-competitive inhibition; Neks
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/20/1/1176

Human Neks are a conserved protein kinase family related to cell cycle progression and cell division and are considered potential drug targets for the treatment of cancer and other pathologies. We screened the activation loop mutant kinases hNek1 and hNek2, wild-type hNek7, and five hNek6 variants in different activation/phosphorylation statesand compared them against 85 compounds using thermal shift denaturation. We identified three compounds with significant Tm shifts: JNK Inhibitor II for hNek1(Δ262-1258)-(T162A), Isogranulatimide for hNek6(S206A), andGSK-3 Inhibitor XIII for hNek7wt. Each one of these compounds was also validated by reducing the kinases activity by at least 25%. The binding sites for these compounds were identified by in silico docking at the ATP-binding site of the respective hNeks. Potential inhibitors were first screened by thermal shift assays, had their efficiency tested by a kinase assay, and were finally analyzed by molecular docking. Our findings corroborate the idea of ATP-competitive inhibition for hNek1 and hNek6 and suggest a novel non-competitive inhibition for hNek7 in regard to GSK-3 Inhibitor XIII. Our results demonstrate that our approach is useful for finding promising general and specific hNekscandidate inhibitors, which may also function as scaffolds to design more potent and selective inhibitors.