Novel TYRO3 inhibitors for treatment of cancer

TYRO 3是受体酪氨酸激酶的TAM（TYRO 3、AXL、MERTK）家族的成员。所有三 家族成员在癌细胞中异常表达，在癌细胞中它们的功能是促进细胞存活，介导 对多种细胞毒性化疗和分子靶向药物的耐药性，并在 巨噬细胞和其他先天性免疫细胞，在那里它们起到抑制抗肿瘤免疫的作用，导致 促进肿瘤生长和转移。这些和其他数据暗示TAM激酶作为潜在的 治疗靶点在各种各样的人类肿瘤。此外，由于TAM激酶的致癌作用， 在肿瘤细胞和免疫细胞中，预期抑制剂提供由直接 肿瘤细胞杀伤和先天免疫应答的调节。虽然TAM激酶具有重叠的 在某些情况下，它们还发挥着独特的作用。具体来说，我们的初步数据表明， 抗肿瘤免疫的抑制特别依赖于TYRO 3。 在这里，我们建议利用一个完善和富有成效的研究人员团队，沿着 计算机辅助药物设计和酶，细胞为基础的和药效学试验，以开发新的， 有效和选择性TYRO 3抑制剂，并验证其在TYRO 3- 依赖性肿瘤异种移植模型和免疫活性同基因癌症模型。TYRO 3可以定位到 核和抑制核定位诱导结肠癌细胞凋亡，表明非- TYRO 3的典型致癌功能可能不能通过单独的激酶抑制有效靶向。 因此，传统的小分子激酶抑制剂和靶向蛋白水解的嵌合（PROTAC）降解剂两者都是有效的。 选择性靶向TYRO 3进行泛素化和降解的方法将被开发和比较。在 完成这项工作后，我们期望提供一种适合于GLP毒性进展的TYRO 3选择性抑制剂 在多个物种中进行的研究，足够的临床前验证研究以支持描述这一点的IND申请 化合物，以及用于大规模合成该化合物的可行方法。

TYRO3 is a member of the TAM (TYRO3, AXL, MERTK) family of receptor tyrosine kinases. All three family members are aberrantly expressed in cancer cells, where they function to promote cell survival, mediate resistance to a variety of cytotoxic chemotherapies and molecularly-targeted agents and have additional roles in macrophages and other innate immune cells where they function to suppress anti-tumor immunity, leading to enhanced tumor growth and metastasis. These and other data implicate the TAM kinases as potential therapeutic targets in a wide variety of human tumors. Moreover, because of the oncogenic roles for TAM kinases in both tumor and immune cells, inhibitors are expected to provide anti-tumor action mediated by both direct tumor cell killing and modulation of the innate immune response. While the TAM kinases have overlapping functions, they also play unique roles in some contexts. Specifically, our preliminary data suggest that suppression of anti-tumor immunity is particularly dependent on TYRO3. Here, we propose to utilize a well-established and productive team of researchers along with computational-aided drug design and enzymatic, cell-based and pharmacodynamic assays to develop novel, potent, and selective TYRO3 inhibitors and validate their biochemical and functional activities in TYRO3- dependent tumor xenograft models and immune-competent syngeneic cancer models. TYRO3 can localize to the nucleus and inhibition of nuclear localization induced apoptosis in colon cancer cells, suggesting non- canonical oncogenic functions for TYRO3 which might not be effectively targeted by kinase inhibition alone. Thus, both traditional small molecule kinase inhibitors and proteolysis-targeting chimeric (PROTAC) degraders that selectively target TYRO3 for ubiquitination and degradation will be developed and compared. At the completion of this work, we expect to deliver a TYRO3-selective inhibitor suitable for advancement to GLP toxicity studies in multiple species, sufficient preclinical validation studies to support an IND application describing this compound, and a viable method for large-scale synthesis of the compound.