Biological functions and drug development of Pyk2 / 中国药理学通报

ABSTRACT

Pyk2(Proline-rich tyrosine kinase 2) is an important member of focal adhesion kinase family. Pyk2 is highly ex-pressed in the central nervous system and the hematopoietic sys-tem . Pyk 2 can trigger a variety of SH 2 domain-containing pro- teins to phosphorylate their substrates, thus it can participate in the regulations including ion channel activation, stress response, cell adhesion, cytoskeleton reorganization, vesicle transport and so on. Through the regulations above, the ability of cell migra-tion, survival, proliferation changes accordingly, suggesting that Pyk2 in many important regulatory processes may become a tar-get for clinical effects. Current drug development for Pyk2 main- ly focuses on cancer, osteoporosis and immune response. This review illustrates the domain structure, regulatory mechanisms, potential drug targets, and the drug development of Pyk2 based on the above three fields, which will provide a theoretical basis for clinical treatment.