BioCentury
ARTICLE | Emerging Company Profile

Kemia: Allosteric coupling to kinases

November 15, 2004 8:00 AM UTC

Small molecules designed to inhibit kinase targets often risk a lack of selectivity because of the highly conserved nature of binding sites across these enzymes. To address this problem, Kemia Inc. designs molecules that bind allosterically to kinases, which it believes will increase subtype selectivity and improve their toxicity profiles.

"The active ATP binding site is shared across more than 400 expressed human kinases," said President and CEO Lewis Shuster. "Thus it's difficult for compounds targeting that site to be highly selective."...