Protein kinases are the pharmaceutical industry's most important class of drug target. Nineteen protein kinase inhibitors have been approved for clinical use and over 150 more are undergoing clinical trials of which about 25 are in Phase III. 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 protein kinases encoded by the human genome.
The MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit at Dundee pioneered analysis of the selectivity of protein kinase inhibitors by setting up the first service 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. Since then many biotechnology companies, as well as academic drug discovery centres, have entered this area, and also need access to "kinase profiling" services at an affordable price.
Our service is available to anyone that wishes to use it and our panel of protein kinases has now increased in size to 140. We have also launched a new lipid kinase profiling service in July 2012. The information in this website explains how "kinase profiling" is carried out and how it can be accessed by interested parties.