Comprehensive profiling of clinically approved kinase inhibitors reveals mutation-specific inhibitors and opportunities for drug repurposing

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Authors: Mehlam Saifudeen, Songli Zhu, Shuguang Liang, Mia Eason, Alison Goupil, Deanna F. Mische, Christian M. Loch, Haiching Ma, Marina Chan, Taranjit S. Gujral
Cited by: 7
References: 81

Abstract

Protein kinases are central to cell signaling and key drug targets in cancer. To inform potential repurposing of kinase inhibitors, we profiled 86 of the ~100 approved kinase inhibitors against 758 kinases, including 409 wild-type and 349 oncogenic variants using a biochemical kinase assay. Our results increase the number of druggable kinases from 89 to 235, revealing that 94% of mutations and 97% of fusions represented in our samples are inhibited by at least one existing drug. The dataset revealed mutation-specific selectivity, especially in tyrosine kinases FGFR and MET, highlighting gaps and repurposing opportunities. We experimentally validated several actionable findings, including tepotinib to target the IRAK1/4-cholesterol pathway in glioblastoma, brigatinib to target the MARK2/3-Hippo pathway in pancreatic cancer and gilteritinib to overcome MET mutation-driven drug resistance and metastasis. To facilitate exploration of our data, we provide KIRHub, a web-based tool that allows identification of existing inhibitors of wild-type and mutated kinases to guide precision oncology.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Hippo pathway signaling and YAP/TAZ Cancer Genomics and Diagnostics Melanoma and MAPK Pathways

Publication details

Journal / source
Nature Biotechnology
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Publication date
20 April 2026
Language
EN