Structural Optimization of Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptor Inhibitors for Treating Solid Tumors

Discovery, Optimization, and Evaluation of Novel Pyridin-2(1H)-one Analogues as Potent TRK Inhibitors for Cancer Treatment

Tropomyosin receptor kinase (TRK) fusion, an oncogenic form of kinase with pan-tumor occurrence, is a clinically validated important antitumor target. In this study, we screened our in-house kinase inhibitor library against TRK and identified a promising hit compound 4 with a novel pyridin-2(1H)-one scaffold. Through a combination of structure-based drug design and structure-activity relationship (SAR) study, compound 14q was identified as a potent TRK inhibitor with good kinase selectivity. It also blocked cellular TRK signaling, thereby inhibiting TRK-dependent cell viability. Additionally, 14q displayed acceptable pharmacokinetic properties with 37.8% oral bioavailability in mice. Strong in vivo tumor growth inhibition of 14q was observed in subcutaneous M091 and KM12 tumor xenograft models with TRK fusion, causing significant tumor inhibition or even complete tumor regression.

KinomeMETA: meta-learning enhanced kinome-wide polypharmacology profiling

Kinase inhibitors are crucial in cancer treatment, but drug resistance and side effects hinder the development of effective drugs. To address these challenges, it is essential to analyze the polypharmacology of kinase inhibitor and identify compound with high selectivity profile. This study presents KinomeMETA, a framework for profiling the activity of small molecule kinase inhibitors across a panel of 661 kinases. By training a meta-learner based on a graph neural network and fine-tuning it to create kinase-specific learners, KinomeMETA outperforms benchmark multi-task models and other kinase profiling models. It provides higher accuracy for understudied kinases with limited known data and broader coverage of kinase types, including important mutant kinases. Case studies on the discovery of new scaffold inhibitors for membrane-associated tyrosine- and threonine-specific cdc2-inhibitory kinase and selective inhibitors for fibroblast growth factor receptors demonstrate the role of KinomeMETA in virtual screening and kinome-wide activity profiling. Overall, KinomeMETA has the potential to accelerate kinase drug discovery by more effectively exploring the kinase polypharmacology landscape.