ABSTRACTThe functions of protein kinases have been widely studied and many kinase inhibitors have been developed into FDA-approved therapeutics. A substantial fraction of the human kinome is nonetheless understudied. In this perspective, members of the NIH Understudied Kinome Consortium mine publicly available databases to assess the functionality of these understudied kinases as well as their potential to be therapeutic targets for drug discovery campaigns. We start with a re-analysis of the kinome as a whole and describe criteria for creating an inclusive set of 710 kinase domains as well as a curated set of 557 protein kinase like (PKL) domains. We define an understudied (‘dark’) kinome by quantifying the public knowledge on each kinase with a PKL domain using an automatic reading machine. We find a substantial number are essential in the Cancer Dependency Map and differentially expressed or mutated in disease databases such as The Cancer Genome Atlas. Based on this and other data, it seems likely that the dark kinome contains biologically important genes, a subset of which may be viable drug targets.

Three inhibitors of the cyclin-dependent kinases CDK4/6, palbociclib, ribociclib, and abemaciclib, have emerged as highly promising therapies for the treatment of breast cancer and other solid tumors. These drugs are reported to have similar mechanisms of action although recent data suggest that abemaciclib exhibits distinct single-agent activity and toxicity. We compare their mechanisms of action using biochemical assays, mRNA profiling, mass spectrometry-based phosphoproteomics, and GR-based dose-response assays. We find that abemaciclib has activities not shared by palbociclib or ribociclib including: induction of cell death (even in pRb-deficient cells), arrest in the G2 phase of the cell cycle, and reduced drug adaptation. These activities appear to arise from inhibition of CDKs other than CDK4/6 including CDK2/Cyclin A/E and CDK1/Cyclin B. We propose that inhibition of these kinases by abemaciclib overcomes known mechanisms of resistance to CDK4/6 inhibition and may be therapeutically advantageous for patients whose tumors progress on palbociclib or ribociclib.