High expression of Nek2 has been detected in several types of cancer and it represents a novel target for human cancer. In the current study, structure-based pharmacophore modeling combined with multiple linear regression (MLR)-based QSAR analyses was applied to disclose the structural requirements for NEK2 inhibition. Generated pharmacophoric models were initially validated with receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, and optimum models were subsequently implemented in QSAR modeling with other physiochemical descriptors. QSAR-selected models were implied as 3D search filters to mine the National Cancer Institute (NCI) database for novel NEK2 inhibitors, whereas the associated QSAR model prioritized the bioactivities of captured hits for in vitro evaluation. Experimental validation identified several potent NEK2 inhibitors of novel structural scaffolds. The most potent captured hit exhibited an [Formula: see text] value of 237 nM.

Infectious diseases are widely spread and can significantly affect people’s lives and cause social and economic damages. Co‐culture systems have been used to investigate different types of cell‐cell interactions just like those that occur in infections between microorganisms and host cells. These techniques have many applications in biology and medicine. Although various co‐culture models using different approaches were published, more modelling strategies are being tested. In this project we present a new co‐culture model based on using agar/glass beads to grow biofilms of different types of bacteria which then can be used to infect cultures of human cells. Biofilms of Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli, Streptococcus intermedius, and Streptococcus oralis were successfully grown using this model. Beads containing bacterial biofilms were co‐cultured with PANC1 epithelial cell line to simulate its infection. This co‐culture model proved to be a facile method to study bacteria‐human cell interaction which also can be used to evaluate the efficacy and toxicity of different drug treatments. Support or Funding Information Scientific Research Support Fund, Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Al Jubaiha, Amman, Jordan 11941.