KinCytE- a Kinase to Cytokine Explorer to Identify Molecular Regulators and Potential Therapeutic Opportunities

  1. Human Biology Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, WA
  2. Data Visualization Core, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, WA
  3. Department of Pharmacology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

Peer review process

Not revised: This Reviewed Preprint includes the authors’ original preprint (without revision), an eLife assessment, public reviews, and a response from the authors (if available).

Read more about eLife’s peer review process.

Editors

  • Reviewing Editor
    Volker Dötsch
    Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
  • Senior Editor
    Volker Dötsch
    Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:
Kinase inhibitors represent a highly valuable class of drugs as evidenced by their continued clinical success. The target landscape of kinase targeting small molecules can be leveraged to alter multiple phenotypes with increasing complexity that broadly aligns with increasing target promiscuity. This 'tools and resources' contribution provides a starting point for researchers interested in aligning kinase inhibitor activity with cytokine/chemokine stimulated signal transduction networks.

Strengths:
KinCytE is a forward-thinking database that yields hypothesis-generating options for researchers interested in pharmacologically modulating cytokine/chemokine signaling.

Weaknesses:
As a 'tools and resources' contribution, the primary (potential) weakness will be the authors' willingness to update and improve the tool. KinCytE will require frequent updating to better inform users in terms of contextual cytokine/chemokine stimulated signaling and the target landscape of those agents that are included as options.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

Summary:
In this manuscript, "KinCytE- a Kinase to Cytokine Explorer to Identify Molecular Regulators and Potential Therapeutic", the authors present a web resource, KinCytE, that lets researchers search for kinase inhibitors that have been shown to affect cytokine and chemokine release and signaling networks. I think it's a valuable resource that has a lot of potential and could be very useful in deciding on statistical analysis that might precede lab experiments.

Opportunities:
With the release of the manuscript and the code base in place, I hope the authors continue to build upon the platform, perhaps by increasing the number of cell types that are probed (beyond macrophages). Additionally, when new drug-response data becomes available, perhaps it can be used to further validate the findings. Overall, I see this as a great project that can evolve.

Strengths:
The site contains valuable content, and the structure is such that growing that content should be possible.

Weaknesses:
Only based on macrophage experiments, would be nice to have other cell types investigated, but I'm sure that will be remedied with some time.

  1. Howard Hughes Medical Institute
  2. Wellcome Trust
  3. Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
  4. Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation