Aurora A kinase activity is required to maintain an active spindle assembly checkpoint during prometaphase.

During the prometaphase stage of mitosis, the cell builds a bipolar spindle of microtubules that mechanically segregates sister chromatids between two daughter cells in anaphase. The spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC) is a quality control mechanism that monitors proper attachment of microtubules to chromosome kinetochores during prometaphase. Segregation occurs only when each chromosome is bi-oriented with each kinetochore pair attached to microtubules emanating from opposite spindle poles.

[The serine/threonine kinases that control cell cycle progression as therapeutic targets].

Cell cycle progression corresponds to a series of events, which succeed one another to end in the division of a mother cell to give two daughter cells. The processes that allow the cell to divide are very precisely controlled by a multitude of enzymatic reactions among which protein phosphorylation, carried out by protein kinases, plays a key role. Serine/threonine kinases are enzymes that catalyse the transfer of a phosphate from ATP to a protein substrate, more precisely on a serine or threonine amino acid residue.