Kinase inhibition through gene edited cell lines

Kinases are a large family of enzymes with over 500 encoded in the human genome and all share a highly conserved kinase domain. Dependent on the substrate they act upon they can be broadly classified into 3 categories: protein kinases, carbohydrate kinases and lipid kinases. Due to the diverse roles that kinases play in the cell they are implicated in a number of diseases including cancer:

• Protein kinases

  can phosphorylate substrate proteins on serine, threonine, tyrosines or histidine residues. Mitogen-activated protein kinases such as RAF kinases involved in the MAPK signalling pathways and cyclin dependent kinases (CDKs) involved in cell cycle regulation are prime examples of pathways implicated in cancers.

• Lipid kinases

  alter the localisation and reactivity of lipids through phosphorylation. A well-known example of a lipid kinase is phosphoinositide 3-kinase which is implicated in a number of cancers, mainly through alterations to its catalytic subunit - PIK3CA.

• Carbohydrate kinases

  such as hexokinase play important roles in the majority of metabolic pathways.