The International Centre for Kinase Profiling

In recent years protein kinases have become the most studied class of drug target. Ten protein kinase inhibitors have now been approved as anti-cancer drugs and many more are undergoing clinical trials. A major challenge in this area is to develop a drug that selectively suppresses the activity of one, or at most a few, of the 500 plus protein kinases encoded by the human genome. The MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit pioneered analysis of the selectivity of protein kinase inhibitors by setting up one of the first services to tackle this problem in 1998.  This procedure, termed “kinase profiling” proved to be of great help to the pharmaceutical industry, speeding up the development of specific protein kinase inhibitors with therapeutic potential.

Many academic centres have set up their own drug discovery programmes to develop protein kinase inhibitors, and also need to access  "kinase profiling" services.  The Medical Research Council Strategy Board have recently provided the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit with additional funding to make the "kinase profiling" service widely available and to continue the expansion of the panel beyond 100 kinases over the next few years.  The information in this website explains how "kinase profiling" is carried out and how it can be accessed by interested parties.