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Publication Abstract from PubMed

Choline kinase alpha (ChoKalpha) is an enzyme involved in the synthesis of phospholipids, and thereby plays key roles in regulation of cell proliferation, oncogenic transformation and human carcinogenesis. Since several inhibitors of ChoKalpha display anti-proliferative activity in both cellular and animal models, this novel oncogene has recently gained interest as a promising small molecule target for cancer therapy. Here we summarize our efforts to further validate ChoKalpha as an oncogenic target, and explore the activity of novel small molecule inhibitors of ChoKalpha. Starting from weakly binding fragments, we describe a structure based lead discovery approach, which resulted in novel highly potent inhibitors of ChoKalpha. In cancer cell lines, our lead compounds exhibit a dose-dependent decrease of phosphocholine, inhibition of cell growth and induction of apoptosis at low micromolar concentrations. The drug-like lead series presented here is optimizable for improvements in cellular potency, drug target residence time, and pharmacokinetic parameters. These inhibitors may be utilized not only to further validate ChoKalpha as anti-oncogenic target, but also as novel chemical matter which may lead to anti-tumor agents that specifically interfere with cancer cell metabolism.

Novel Small Molecule Inhibitors of Choline Kinase Identified by Fragment-based Drug Discovery.,Zech SG, Kohlmann A, Zhou T, Li F, Squillache R, Parillon L, Greenfield M, Miller D, Qi J, Thomas M, Wang Y, Xu Y, Miret J, Shakespeare WC, Zhu X, Dalgarno DC J Med Chem. 2015 Dec 23. PMID:26700752^[2]

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.