CureFAKtor: Cracking FAK's interactome

Inhibiting focal adhesion kinase to treat cancer has been hamstrung by off-target side effects because the drug candidates targeted the protein's highly conserved ATP-binding site. Cure-FAKtor Pharmaceuticals LLC hopes to avoid these problems by inhibiting FAK allosterically. The company's goal is not to knock out FAK entirely, but to inhibit the kinase's ability to protect oncogenic proteins, thus making them more susceptible to chemo and radiation therapies.

FAK is a tyrosine kinase that is localized at the contact points between cells and the extracellular matrix where it plays an important role in signaling pathways related to cell adhesion, motility, mitogenesis, angiogenesis and oncogenic transformation...