SGC-CK2-1: The First Selective Chemical Probe for the Pleiotropic Kinase CK2

Building upon a wealth of published knowledge surrounding the pyrazolopyrimidine scaffold, we designed a small library around the most selective small molecule CK2 inhibitors reported. Through extensive evaluation of this library we identified inhibitor 24 (SGC-CK2-1) as a potent, selective, and cell-active CK2 chemical probe. Remarkably, despite years of research pointing to CK2 as a key driver in cancer, our probe did not elicit an antiproliferative phenotype in cell lines tested. While many publications have attempted tocharacterize CK2 function, CK2 biology is complex and a high-quality chemical tool like SGC-CK2-1 will aid in connecting CK2 functions to phenotypes.