1. Academic Validation
  2. Mutation-oriented profiling of autoinhibitory kinase conformations predicts RAF inhibitor efficacies

Mutation-oriented profiling of autoinhibitory kinase conformations predicts RAF inhibitor efficacies

  • Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020 Dec 8;117(49):31105-31113. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2012150117.
Johanna E Mayrhofer 1 Florian Enzler 1 2 Andreas Feichtner 1 Ruth Röck 1 Jakob Fleischmann 1 Andrea Raffeiner 1 Philipp Tschaikner 1 3 Egon Ogris 4 Roland G Huber 5 Markus Hartl 1 Rainer Schneider 1 Jakob Troppmair 2 Omar Torres-Quesada 6 Eduard Stefan 6
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Institute of Biochemistry and Center for Molecular Biosciences, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria.
  • 2 Daniel Swarovski Research Laboratory, Department of Visceral, Transplant and Thoracic Surgery, Medical University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria.
  • 3 Institute of Molecular Biology, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria.
  • 4 Center for Medical Biochemistry, Max Perutz Labs, Medical University of Vienna, A-1030 Vienna, Austria.
  • 5 Bioinformatics Institute, Agency for Science Technology and Research, 138671 Singapore, Singapore.
  • 6 Institute of Biochemistry and Center for Molecular Biosciences, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria; omar.quesada@uibk.ac.at eduard.stefan@uibk.ac.at.
Abstract

Kinase-targeted therapies have the potential to improve the survival of patients with Cancer. However, the cancer-specific spectrum of kinase alterations exhibits distinct functional properties and requires mutation-oriented drug treatments. Besides post-translational modifications and diverse intermolecular interactions of kinases, it is the distinct disease mutation which reshapes full-length kinase conformations, affecting their activity. Oncokinase mutation profiles differ between Cancer types, as it was shown for BRaf in melanoma and non-small-cell lung cancers. Here, we present the target-oriented application of a kinase conformation (KinCon) reporter platform for live-cell measurements of autoinhibitory kinase activity states. The bioluminescence-based KinCon biosensor allows the tracking of conformation dynamics of full-length kinases in intact cells and real time. We show that the most frequent BRAF Cancer mutations affect kinase conformations and thus the engagement and efficacy of V600E-specific BRaf inhibitors (BRAFi). We illustrate that the patient mutation harboring KinCon reporters display differences in the effectiveness of the three clinically approved BRAFi vemurafenib, encorafenib, and dabrafenib and the preclinical paradox breaker PLX8394. We confirmed KinCon-based drug efficacy predictions for BRaf mutations other than V600E in proliferation assays using patient-derived lung Cancer cell lines and by analyzing downstream kinase signaling. The systematic implementation of such conformation reporters will allow to accelerate the decision process for the mutation-oriented RAF-kinase Cancer therapy. Moreover, we illustrate that the presented kinase reporter concept can be extended to other kinases which harbor patient mutations. Overall, KinCon profiling provides additional mechanistic insights into full-length kinase functions by reporting protein-protein interaction (PPI)-dependent, mutation-specific, and drug-driven changes of kinase activity conformations.

Keywords

biosensor; drug efficacy prediction; lung cancer; mutant BRAF; precision medicine.

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