Overcoming compound fluorescence in the FLiK screening assay with red-shifted fluorophores

In the attempt to discover novel chemical scaffolds that can modulate the activity of disease-associated enzymes, such as kinases, biochemical assays are usually deployed in high-throughput screenings. First-line assays, such as activity-based assays, often rely on fluorescent molecules by measuring a change in the total emission intensity, polarization state, or energy transfer to another fluorescent molecule. However, under certain conditions, intrinsic compound fluorescence can lead to difficult data analysis and to false-positive, as well as false-negative, hits. We have reported previously on a powerful direct binding assay called fluorescent labels in kinases (‘FLiK’), which enables a sensitive measurement of conformational changes in kinases upon ligand binding. In this assay system, changes in the emission spectrum of the fluorophore acrylodan, induced by the binding of a ligand, are translated into a robust assay readout. However, under the excitation conditions of acrylodan, intrinsic compound f...