Exploring Selectivity of Multikinase Inhibitors across the Human Kinome

Selectivity of kinase inhibitors, or the lack thereof, continues to be an intensely debated topic in drug discovery research. Especially, type I inhibitors, which represent most of the currently available kinase inhibitors, are often thought to lack selectivity because they target the largely conserved adenosine triphosphate-binding site in kinases. Herein, we present a large-scale analysis of potential selectivity among multikinase inhibitors, covering 141 human kinases and more than 10 000 qualifying compounds. By design, the analysis was focused on type I inhibitors and carried out at the level of systematically generated kinase pairs sharing inhibitors. Kinase pair category- and compound-based selectivity profiles identified in part highly selective inhibitors for many kinases. Sets of inhibitors associated with kinase pairs frequently contained nonselective as well as increasingly selective compounds. Selectivity of inhibitors did not result from gatekeeper residues settings or phylogenetic distance of kinases. Rather, it was most likely attributable to subtle differences between binding regions in kinases. Taken together, the results of our study reveal that many multikinase inhibitors are more selective than one might assume.