In this study we selected point mutations resulting in Pim-1 variants that are expressed in cancer tissues and reported in SNP databases, such as FastSNP and COSMIC. These Pim-1 variants have been comprehensively characterized to investigate the effect of single amino acid substitution on Pim-1 thermal and thermodynamic stability and structure in solution. Our results indicate that the effects of the mutation observed in cancer tissues cause local changes of tertiary structure, but do not affect binding to type I kinase inhibitors.

This work has been pioneered by researches at the Department of Biochemical Sciences “A. Rossi Fanelli”, Sapienza University of Rome and served as an inspiration for one of my thesis chapters.