Current Cancer Drug Targets - Volume 12, Issue 4, 2012

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Angiogenesis is a key factor in the carcinogenesis process. In oncological practice, angiogenesis inhibition, mainly through the blockade of the VEGF family and its receptors, has been robustly demonstrated to produce clinical benefits and, in specific disease subsets such as colorectal cancer, to extend the overall survival of treated patients. VEGF is a multifunctional growth factor that mediates its functions through cognate recep Read More

Personalized medicine emphasizes the practice of considering individual patient characteristics as opposed to that centered on standards derived from epidemiological studies which, by definition, do not take into account the variability of individuals within a given population. When applied to oncology, personalized medicine is an even more complex concept because it extends the variability beyond the individual patient to the Read More

Over the past two decades, progresses in colorectal cancer treatment have significantly improved patient survival and quality of life. However, unresectable metastatic colorectal cancer remains virtually incurable, making the search for new effective therapeutics mandatory. An important limitation to the development of new agents has been the difficulty to exploit mutated tumor suppressors or “undruggable” oncogenes a Read More

This review article is part of a special Current Cancer Drug Targets issue devoted to colorectal cancer and molecularly targeted treatments. In our paper we made an attempt to connect more basic aspects with preclinical, pharmacological / therapeutic and clinical aspects. Reconstruction of a Molecular Interaction Map (MIM) comprising an important part of the G0 – G1 – S cell cycle transition, was a major component of our rev Read More

Although several drugs have been designed in the last few years to target specific key pathways and functions in colorectal cancer (CRC), the backbone of CRC treatment is still made up of compounds which rely on DNA damage to accomplish their role. DNA damage response (DDR) and checkpoint pathways are intertwined signaling networks that arrest cell cycle, recognize and repair genetic mistakes which arise during Read More

Thal has antiangiogenic and immunomodulatory activity. Clinical research provided clear evidence that Thal belongs to the most active drugs for the treatment of multiple myeloma e.g. leading to decrease of monoclonal protein of at least 50 % in 30 % of patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma. Randomized trials that were designed based on a large body of evidence from phase II trials determined that Thal si Read More

Recent results of phase II trials which used dasatinib or nilotinib as single agent, or phase III trials comparing second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors to imatinib, showed greater potency of these two inhibitors in newly diagnosed chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) patients in chronic phase (CP). In the present review we detail and summarize clinical results of both agents as first-line therapeutic strategy, and also discuss on Read More

Refractoriness to the pharmacological treatment of cancer is dependent on the expression levels of genes involved in mechanisms of chemoresistance and on the existence of genetic variants that may affect their function. Thus, changes in genes encoding solute carriers may account for considerable inter-individual variability in drug uptake and the lack of sensitivity to the substrates of these transporters. Mor Read More

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is quite resistant to conventional treatments, and gemcitabine, the standard chemotherapeutic agent, offers only a small benefit. Development and progression of PDAC are complex processes involving dysregulation of multiple signal transduction pathways arising from not only genetic but also epigenetic alterations. This makes the epigenetic approach to the treatment of PDAC of Read More