The essential mitotic kinase Aurora A (AURKA) is controlled during cell cycle progression via two distinct mechanisms. Following activation loop autophosphorylation early in mitosis when it localizes to centrosomes, AURKA is allosterically activated on the mitotic spindle via binding to the microtubule-associated protein, TPX2. Here, we report the discovery of AurkinA, a novel chemical inhibitor of the AURKA-TPX2 interaction, which acts via an unexpected structural mechanism to inhibit AURKA activity and mitotic localization. In crystal structures, AurkinA binds to a hydrophobic pocket (the ‘Y pocket’) that normally accommodates a conserved Tyr-Ser-Tyr motif from TPX2, blocking the AURKA-TPX2 interaction. AurkinA binding to the Y- pocket induces structural changes in AURKA that inhibit catalytic activity in vitro and in cells, without affecting ATP binding to the active site, defining a novel mechanism of allosteric inhibition. Consistent with this mechanism, cells exposed to AurkinA mislocalise AURKA from mitotic spindle microtubules. Thus, our findings provide fresh insight into the catalytic mechanism of AURKA, and identify a key structural feature as the target for a new class of dual-mode AURKA inhibitors, with implications for the chemical biology and selective therapeutic targeting of structurally related kinases.

The breast cancer suppressor BRCA2 controls the recombinase RAD51 in the reactions that mediate homologous DNA recombination, an essential cellular process required for the error-free repair of DNA double-stranded breaks. The primary mode of interaction between BRCA2 and RAD51 is through the BRC repeats, which are ∼35 residue peptide motifs that interact directly with RAD51 in vitro. Human BRCA2, like its mammalian orthologues, contains 8 BRC repeats whose sequence and spacing are evolutionarily conserved. Despite their sequence conservation, there is evidence that the different human BRC repeats have distinct capacities to bind RAD51. A previously published crystal structure reports the structural basis of the interaction between human BRC4 and the catalytic core domain of RAD51. However, no structural information is available regarding the binding of the remaining seven BRC repeats to RAD51, nor is it known why the BRC repeats show marked variation in binding affinity to RAD51 despite only subtle sequence variation. To address these issues, we have performed fluorescence polarisation assays to indirectly measure relative binding affinity, and applied computational simulations to interrogate the behaviour of the eight human BRC-RAD51 complexes, as well as a suite of BRC cancer-associated mutations. Our computational approaches encompass a range of techniques designed to link sequence variation with binding free energy. They include MM-PBSA and thermodynamic integration, which are based on classical force fields, and a recently developed approach to computing binding free energies from large-scale quantum mechanical first principles calculations with the linear-scaling density functional code onetep. Our findings not only reveal how sequence variation in the BRC repeats directly affects affinity with RAD51 and provide significant new insights into the control of RAD51 by human BRCA2, but also exemplify a palette of computational and experimental tools for the analysis of protein-protein interactions for chemical biology and molecular therapeutics.

SummaryMutations activating KRAS underlie many forms of cancer, but are refractory to therapeutic targeting. Here, we develop Poloppin, an inhibitor of protein-protein interactions via the Polo-box domain (PBD) of the mitotic Polo-like kinases (PLKs), in monotherapeutic and combination strategies to target mutant KRAS. Poloppin engages its targets in biochemical and cellular assays, triggering mitotic arrest with defective chromosome congression. Poloppin kills cells expressing mutant KRAS, selectively enhancing death in mitosis. PLK1 or PLK4 depletion recapitulates these cellular effects, as does PBD overexpression, corroborating Poloppin's mechanism of action. An optimized analog with favorable pharmacokinetics, Poloppin-II, is effective against KRAS-expressing cancer xenografts. Poloppin resistance develops less readily than to an ATP-competitive PLK1 inhibitor; moreover, cross-sensitivity persists. Poloppin sensitizes mutant KRAS-expressing cells to clinical inhibitors of c-MET, opening opportunities for combination therapy. Our findings exemplify the utility of small molecules modulating the protein-protein interactions of PLKs to therapeutically target mutant KRAS-expressing cancers.