Reversine

Reversine is a novel class of ATP-competitive Aurora kinase inhibitors. Reversine inhibits the phosphorylation of histone H3, a direct downstream target of Aurora kinases. Similarly to the Aurora kinase inhibitor VX-680, reversine inhibited colony formation of leukemic cells from patients with acute myeloid leukemia but was significantly less toxic than VX-680 on cells from healthy donors. Reversine can increase the plasticity of C2C12 myoblasts at the single-cell level and that reversine-treated cells gain the ability to differentiate into osteoblasts and adipocytes under lineage-specific inducing conditions. Moreover, reversine is active in multiple cell types, including 3T3E1 osteoblasts and human primary skeletal myoblasts. Cultured myoblasts treated for four days with 5 μM reversine were dedifferentiated into confluent stem cell progenitors, that could then be induced by osteogenic or adipogenic medium to re-differentiate into bone or adipose precursors, respectively.