Anti-Cancer Agents in Medicinal Chemistry (Formerly Current Medicinal Chemistry - Anti-Cancer Agents) - Volume 10, Issue 6, 2010

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most common brain cancer in adults and one of the deadliest human malignancies. Prognosis for these patients remains dismal and has not been significantly improved in the past decades. Specifically, most GBM patients survive only one year after diagnosis and rarely live longer than two years. This poor prognosis is largely due to our insufficient understanding of the complex natur Read More

Induction of caspase-dependent apoptosis (type I cell death) is a major mechanism by which most chemotherapeutic drugs and radiation kill tumor cells. However, conventional cancer therapies fail to mediate their effects in a target-specific fashion. The extremely unfavorable prognosis for patients suffering from glioblastomas (GBMs) is strongly correlated to the intrinsic apoptosis resistance of GBM cells which especially occ Read More

Cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2) is frequently found up-regulated during pathological conditions and in cancer, where it is thought to support carcinogenesis and tumor angiogenesis. The development of newer-generation non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) able to more selectively inhibit cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2) raised expectations that these agents might be beneficial for cancer prevention and therap Read More

Immunotherapy of brain tumors is rapidly emerging as a potential clinical option [1-3]. The quality and magnitude of immune responses evoked by the new generation anti-tumor vaccines is in general highly dependent on the source or choice of peptide antigens, and as well, a suitable immunopotentiator. Poorly immunogenic antigens, such as those present in tumor cell lysates, may not reliably provide stimulation like r Read More

Both stem cells and cancer cells are thought to be capable of unlimited self-renewal. Moreover, a small number of cancer cells express stem cell markers, including CD133 and ATP-binding cassette transporters through which the cells can pump out anti-cancer drugs or specific fluorescence dyes such as Hoechst33342, suggesting that either cancer cells resemble stem cells or that cancers contain stem cell-like cancer cells, c Read More

Obesity has been recognized as an important risk factor for many serious medical conditions. The association of obesity with an increased risk of many cancers is of enormous economic importance to the health industry.The metabolic syndrome and visceral obesity have an increasing prevelance and incidence in the general population.The actual prevelance of the metabolic syndrome is 24% in US population and betw Read More

The epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptors, one family of protein tyrosine kinases (PTK), are promising targets for the cancer therapy. Many potential inhibitors including monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), reversible inhibitors and irreversible inhibitors have been developed. Some of them have been approved by the FDA or in the stage of clinical trials. This report reviews the recent progress of the structures, functions and i Read More

Arsenic trioxide (ATO) has shown great promise in the treatment of patients with relapsed or refractory acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). However, the risk/benefit ratios of ATO in hematologic malignancies other than APL are still unclear. In this review, the author attempts to provide current experimental and clinical challenges to gain more knowledge of the effects of ATO by examining combination therapies with oth Read More