1. Development of dual and selective degraders of cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6.
Jiang, B., Wang, E.S., Donovan, K.A., Liang, Y., Fischer, E.S., Zhang, T. and Gray, N.S., 2019. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 58(19), pp.6321-6326.
Cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6 (CDK4/6) are key regulators of the cell cycle, and there are FDA-approved CDK4/6 inhibitors for treating patients with metastatic breast cancer. However, due to conservation of their ATP-binding sites, development of selective agents has remained elusive. Here, we report imide-based degrader molecules capable of degrading both CDK4/6, or selectively degrading either CDK4 or CDK6. We were also able to tune the activity of these molecules against Ikaros (IKZF1) and Aiolos (IKZF3), which are well-established targets of imide-based degraders. We found that in mantle cell lymphoma cell lines, combined IKZF1/3 degradation with dual CDK4/6 degradation produced enhanced anti-proliferative effects compared to CDK4/6 inhibition, CDK4/6 degradation, or IKZF1/3 degradation. In summary, we report here the first compounds capable of inducing selective degradation of CDK4 and CDK6 as tools to pharmacologically dissect their distinct biological functions.
2. Mapping the degradable kinome provides a resource for expedited degrader development.
Donovan, K.A., Ferguson, F.M., Bushman, J.W., Eleuteri, N.A., Bhunia, D., Ryu, S., Tan, L., Shi, K., Yue, H., Liu, X. and Dobrovolsky, D., 2020. Cell, 183(6), pp.1714-1731.
Targeted protein degradation (TPD) refers to the use of small molecules to induce ubiquitin-dependent degradation of proteins. TPD is of interest in drug development, as it can address previously inaccessible targets. However, degrader discovery and optimization remains an inefficient process due to a lack of understanding of the relative importance of the key molecular events required to induce target degradation. Here, we use chemo-proteomics to annotate the degradable kinome. Our expansive dataset provides chemical leads for ~200 kinases and demonstrates that the current practice of starting from the highest potency binder is an ineffective method for discovering active compounds. We develop multitargeted degraders to answer fundamental questions about the ubiquitin proteasome system, uncovering that kinase degradation is p97 dependent. This work will not only fuel kinase degrader discovery, but also provides a blueprint for evaluating targeted degradation across entire gene families to accelerate understanding of TPD beyond the kinome.
