Highlights d KI-ARv-03 reduces AR protein levels and AR-driven transcription d KI-ARv-03 is deduced to be a potent, ultraselective inhibitor of CDK9 d Optimization led to the orally bioavailable and selective CDK9 inhibitor KB-0742 d KB-0742 displays potent anti-tumor activity in cancer models in vitro and in vivo

High throughput screening has historically been used for drug discovery almost exclusively by the pharmaceutical industry. Due to a significant decrease in costs associated with establishing a high throughput facility and an exponential interest in discovering probes of development and disease associated biomolecules, HTS core facilities have become an integral part of most academic and non-profit research institutions over the past decade. This major shift has led to the development of new HTS methodologies extending beyond the capabilities and target classes used in classical drug discovery approaches such as traditional enzymatic activity-based screens. In this brief review we describe some of the most interesting developments in HTS technologies and methods for chemical probe discovery.

We identified potent, functionalisable BMX inhibitors and revealed their covalent mode of binding to BMX by X-ray crystallography.