eprintid: 1500853 rev_number: 25 eprint_status: archive userid: 608 dir: disk0/01/50/08/53 datestamp: 2016-10-13 10:38:30 lastmod: 2019-08-11 09:32:45 status_changed: 2016-10-13 10:38:30 type: thesis metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Bellany, F title: Development of Aurora A Kinase-Specific Inhibitors as Anticancer Agents ispublished: unpub divisions: A01 divisions: B04 divisions: C06 divisions: F56 abstract: It is believed that one in two people will be diagnosed with cancer during their lifetime. Therefore, there is an urgent need to research and develop new treatments and one of the recent areas of cancer research has targeted components of mitosis, mainly the mitotic kinases. This research project has focused on the Aurora kinases, a family of serine/threonine kinases which play a central role in chromosome segregation and cell division during mitosis. It has recently been demonstrated that Coenzyme A (CoA) is a highly selective ATP-competitive inhibitor of Aurora A kinase. However, the pharmacokinetic properties of CoA, in particular its poor cell permeability, need improvement. The aim of this PhD is to design and synthesise analogues of CoA that are more “drug-like”, whilst conserving the features that lead to the selective inhibition. Three series of compounds have been synthesised during the course of this research. The first, conserved the pantothenamide tail and focused on replacing the adenosine moiety of CoA with a heteroaromatic head group based around VX680 – a known inhibitor of the Aurora kinases. During the synthesis of this series, a problematic key step was optimised using a Design of Experiment (DoE) approach. The second series focused on replacing the pyrophosphate group of CoA with known literature mimics to improve the overall drug likeness of the compound before starting to investigate the structure activity relationship (SAR) around the tail region of CoA. The final series of compounds were synthesised to investigate the possible location of the pantetheine tail within the Aurora A binding site – believed to be important for selectivity towards Aurora A. These analogues conserved the structure of CoA and attached affinity labels to the terminal –SH with the capability of covalently interacting with residues within the active site of the kinase. date: 2016-06-28 date_type: published oa_status: green full_text_type: other thesis_class: doctoral_open language: eng thesis_view: UCL_Thesis primo: open primo_central: open_green verified: verified_manual elements_id: 1136527 lyricists_name: Bellany, Fiona lyricists_id: BELLA85 actors_name: Bellany, Fiona actors_id: BELLA85 actors_role: owner full_text_status: public pages: 294 event_title: University College London institution: UCL (University College London) department: Chemistry thesis_type: Doctoral citation: Bellany, F; (2016) Development of Aurora A Kinase-Specific Inhibitors as Anticancer Agents. Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London). Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1500853/1/Fiona%20Bellany%20-%20PhD%20Thesis.pdf