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Publication Abstract from PubMed

The two major Aurora kinases carry out critical functions at distinct mitotic stages. Selective inhibitors of these kinases, as well as pan-Aurora inhibitors, show antitumor efficacy and are now under clinical investigation. However, the ATP-binding sites of Aurora A and Aurora B are virtually identical, and the structural basis for selective inhibition has therefore not been clear. We report here a class of bisanilinopyrimidine Aurora A inhibitors with excellent selectivity for Aurora A over Aurora B, both in enzymatic assays and in cellular phenotypic assays. Crystal structures of two of the inhibitors in complex with Aurora A implicate a single amino acid difference in Aurora B as responsible for poor inhibitory activity against this enzyme. Mutation of this residue in Aurora B (E161T) or Aurora A (T217E) is sufficient to swap the inhibition profile, suggesting that this difference might be exploited more generally to achieve high selectivity for Aurora A.

A class of 2,4-bisanilinopyrimidine Aurora A inhibitors with unusually high selectivity against Aurora B.,Aliagas-Martin I, Burdick D, Corson L, Dotson J, Drummond J, Fields C, Huang OW, Hunsaker T, Kleinheinz T, Krueger E, Liang J, Moffat J, Phillips G, Pulk R, Rawson TE, Ultsch M, Walker L, Wiesmann C, Zhang B, Zhu BY, Cochran AG J Med Chem. 2009 May 28;52(10):3300-7. PMID:19402633^[1]

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