The Stauro caproKit™ represents an ideal kinase profiling system to improve and support drug discovery projects.

Protein kinases play a key role in the regulation of signaling cascades e.g. for cell proliferation, apotosis, or differentiation. Disruption in the regulation of these inter-connected networks are closely associated with diseases like neuronal disorders, cancer, or inflammatory reactions. As many protein kinases are proto oncoproteins or involved in oncogenic signaling a major component towards cancer treatment is the understanding interplay of different signaling cascades to aid in the development of effective therapies.

Staurosporine is a natural product which was originally isolated from the bacterium Streptomyces staurosporeus. The interest in this alkaloid resulted from its anti-fungal and anti-hypertensive properties. Staurosporine is a potent inhibitor for a large number of serine/threonine kinases, like protein kinase C (PKC), cAMP- and cGMP-dependent protein kinases and also suppresses several tyrosine kinases, like p60v-src, EGF-, or insulin receptor. It binds to many kinases with a preference to ATP-binding proteins with a high affinity but with little selectivity. This lack of selectivity has made staurosporine a valuable tool to understand the time-dependent interplay of the different biochemical and signalling pathways, or the structure and function of cellular proteins.

Staurosporine is attached to the Capture Compound™ scaffold and used as selectivity function for the functional isolation of protein kinases and support future drug discovery approaches.