A kinase inhibitor for malignant brain tumors

Malignant brain tumors, mostly glioblastoma, account for ~25,000 diagnoses and 16,000 deaths per year in the USA. Median survival from diagnosis is less than a year. Targeted- and immuno-therapies have made little impact. An effective small molecule drug would be transformative. We identified a protein kinase as a potential glioma/glioblastoma target using DepMap data as one of very few proteins that are much more essential in cell lines derived from CNS tumors than other cancers. The kinase helps re-build the nuclear envelope after mitosis and may have other functions. Recent preprints showed that it is selectively essential in CNS tumor lines because they tend to lack expression of its paralog. The aim of this grant is to screen for specific inhibitors of this kinase.