Aurora kinase A, a synthetic lethal target for precision cancer medicine

Exp Mol Med. 2021 May;53(5):835-847. doi: 10.1038/s12276-021-00635-6. Epub 2021 May 28.

Abstract

Recent advances in high-throughput sequencing technologies and data science have facilitated the development of precision medicine to treat cancer patients. Synthetic lethality is one of the core methodologies employed in precision cancer medicine. Synthetic lethality describes the phenomenon of the interplay between two genes in which deficiency of a single gene does not abolish cell viability but combined deficiency of two genes leads to cell death. In cancer treatment, synthetic lethality is leveraged to exploit the dependency of cancer cells on a pathway that is essential for cell survival when a tumor suppressor is mutated. This approach enables pharmacological targeting of mutant tumor suppressors that are theoretically undruggable. Successful clinical introduction of BRCA-PARP synthetic lethality in cancer treatment led to additional discoveries of novel synthetic lethal partners of other tumor suppressors, including p53, PTEN, and RB1, using high-throughput screening. Recent work has highlighted aurora kinase A (AURKA) as a synthetic lethal partner of multiple tumor suppressors. AURKA is a serine/threonine kinase involved in a number of central biological processes, such as the G2/M transition, mitotic spindle assembly, and DNA replication. This review introduces synthetic lethal interactions between AURKA and its tumor suppressor partners and discusses the potential of AURKA inhibitors in precision cancer medicine.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Aurora Kinase A / genetics*
  • Aurora Kinase A / metabolism*
  • Biomarkers, Tumor*
  • Clinical Trials as Topic
  • Disease Susceptibility
  • Drug Development
  • Drug Evaluation, Preclinical
  • Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic / drug effects
  • Humans
  • Molecular Targeted Therapy
  • Neoplasms / drug therapy
  • Neoplasms / etiology*
  • Neoplasms / metabolism*
  • Neoplasms / pathology
  • Precision Medicine
  • Protein Kinase Inhibitors / pharmacology*
  • Protein Kinase Inhibitors / therapeutic use
  • Signal Transduction / drug effects
  • Synthetic Lethal Mutations*
  • Treatment Outcome

Substances

  • Biomarkers, Tumor
  • Protein Kinase Inhibitors
  • AURKA protein, human
  • Aurora Kinase A