Current Cancer Drug Targets - Volume 10, Issue 8, 2010

The new millennium brought the transition from classical therapy to targeted cancer therapy. Although multiple pathways are involved in cancer initiation and progression, the RAS pathway seems to emerge as particularly important. In their review article entitled “RAS oncogenes: the first 30 years”, Marcos Malumbres and Mariano Barbacid emphasized that RAS genes have always been at the leading edge of research in vario Read More

Constitutive activation of the EGFR/RAS/PI3K cell-signaling pathway that may occur through molecular aberrations in core pathway components occurs in many solid tumours, including colorectal cancer(CRC), non-small-cell lung cancer(NSCLC) and breast cancer. Predictive biomarkers of response to therapeutics targeting this pathway are necessary to select patients more likely to respond, and importantly, to avoid treati Read More

KRAS mutation testing opened up a new era in routine pathological diagnostics of colorectal cancer similar to the introduction of HER-2 testing in breast cancer with the significant difference that mutational analysis exclusively relies on molecular methodologies. In order to critically analyze the current rational of KRAS mutation testing in colorectal carcinoma we have performed evaluation of related articles available in PubMed/ Read More

Mutations in K-Ras are observed in approximately 40% of colon tumours. This has significant implications for predicting likelihood of response to the antibody-based EGFR inhibitors, cetuximab and panitumumab, with K-Ras mutant patients now clearly shown to be inherently resistant to these agents. Alternative treatment strategies for K-Ras mutant patients are therefore urgently needed. Farnesyltransferase inhibitors, develo Read More

Although not frequently mutated in prostate cancer Ras isoforms play a pivotal role in multiple pathways that have been implicated in prostate cancer progression to androgen independence. These have included growth factor and cytokine induced activation of the androgen receptor and its coregulators by post translational modification. Current evidence suggests that Ras is also required for androgen receptor activation i Read More

Malignant gliomas are the most common and the deadliest brain malignancies in adults. Despite the lack of a complete understanding of the biology of these tumors, significant advances have been made in the past decades. One of the key discoveries made in the area of malignant gliomas is that these tumors can be induced and maintained by aberrant signaling networks. In this context, the Ras pathway has been Read More

Both RAS and transforming growth factor (TGF)-β signaling cascades are central in tumorigenesis and show synergisms depending on tumor stage and tissue context. In this review we focus on the interaction of RAS subeffector proteins with signaling components of the TGF-β family including those of TGF-βs, activins and bone morphogenic proteins. Compelling evidence indicates that RAS signaling is essentially involved in the Read More

The small GTP-binding proteins HRAS, KRAS and NRAS belong to a family of oncoproteins associated with many types of human cancer. Signal transduction processes initiated at receptor tyrosine kinases converge on RAS proteins which serve as molecular switches linking upstream signals with the transcriptional machinery. RAS proteins interact with a number of effector proteins that in turn activate the Raf/MEK/ERK pathw Read More

Activated oncogenes like Ras have traditionally been thought of as promoting unrestrained proliferation; therefore, the concept of oncogene-induced senescence has been, and still is, controversial. The counter-intuitive notion that activation of oncogenes leads to the prevention of cellular proliferation has initially been fueled by in vitro studies using ectopic expression of activated Ras in primary fibroblasts. While these initia Read More

Our understanding of the process of tumour vascularization and the consequences of targeting the tumour vasculature to treat cancer has considerably evolved since the seminal hypothesis, formulated by Judah Folkman almost 40 years ago, that tumour growth and metastasis rely on the formation of a new vascular network. As the cellular mechanisms and the molecular pathways involved in tumour angiogenesis hav Read More

Tumor angiogenesis, i.e. the development of neovascularisation in and around solid tumors, plays a key role in the local and distant growth of cancer and anti-angiogenic treatments are now established strategies to treat cancer patients. Specific inhibitors of angiogenesis such as bevacizumab or receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors targeting VEGFR or PDGFR are now in clinical trials and are being increasingly validat Read More

The inhibition of oncogenic signaling pathways has gained great interest for cancer therapy. In this context, the molecular chaperone heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) has emerged as a promising molecular target, since it is critically involved in maintaining stability, integrity and functions of key oncogenic proteins. A variety of HSP90 inhibitors have been developed in the past decade and have shown convincing anti-neoplastic ac Read More

Judah Folkman was the first in 1971 to observe and report that cancer growth and dissemination were dependent on angiogenesis - the formation of new blood vessels from pre-existing vasculature. For almost 40 years, this concept has inspired generations of researchers to identify anti-angiogenic molecules that could be used therapeutically to stop blood vessels formation and starve tumors of nutrients and oxygen. Tu Read More

The capacity to induce new blood vessel formation or to repair damaged vessels is an attractive idea that has, for a long time, captured the attention and imagination of researchers. Beside the identification of the pro-angiogenic growth factors and their counterpart inhibitors, the discovery of endothelial progenitor cells (EPC) in adults and their putative vascular-promoting and/or vascular-healing properties, has ge Read More

The efficacy of cancer-immunotherapy with complement-activating monoclonal antibodies is limited by over-expression of one or more membrane-bound complement regulatory proteins (mCRPs: CD46, CD55, CD59) on the surface of neoplastic cells. In this study we designed small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) for posttranscriptional gene knock down of CD46, CD55 and CD59 aiming to sensitize tumor cells to complement attack a Read More

Pokemon gene has crucial but versatile functions in cell differentiation, proliferation and tumorigenesis. It is a master regulator of the ARF-HDM2-p53 and Rb-E2F pathways. The facts that the expression of Pokemon is essential for tumor formation and many kinds of tumors over-express the Pokemon gene make it an attractive target for therapeutic intervention for cancer treatment. In this study, we used an RNAi strategy to Read More