Kinetin/N6-furfuryladenine: A New Neurodegenerative Disease Lead from an Old Plant Cytokine

195 N6-fufuryladenine (N6FFA), or kinetin, has a long history as a plant cytokine with practical applications in agriculture. This adenosine analog is now commonplace in natural product small molecule chemical screening libraries, and as such has been discovered as active in mammalian disease pathways that include Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease (HD) and Familial Dysautonomia. We provide a perspective on our data relative to HD and recent discoveries of genetic modifiers of this disease predominantly related to DNA damage repair. We outline the importance of nucleotide salvage and the presence of this adenosine analog in human samples and efficacy in models of human disease, with mechanisms that are empowered by chemical studies using N6FFA as a nucleic acid crosslinking agent.