Current Cancer Drug Targets - Volume 13, Issue 3, 2013

AKT/PKB (Protein Kinase B) are central proteins mediating signals from receptor tyrosine kinases and phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase. AKT kinases are involved in a number of important cellular processes including cell proliferation and survival, cell size in response to nutrient availability, tumor invasion/metastasis, and angiogenesis. Various components of the AKT signaling pathway are encoded by tumor suppressor genes and Read More

Studies on erythropoietin regulation led to discovery of hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF-1), a transcription factor which is central component of oxygen sensing mechanism in mammalian cells. The number of HIF-1 and hypoxiaregulated target genes has grown exponentially and includes genes that encode proteins with roles in erythropoiesis, angiogenesis, glycolytic pathway, glucose transport, metastasis, and cell survival Read More

Humans are exposed to heavy metals through a variety of occupational and non-occupational means. Growing evidence has accumulated that prolonged exposure to these heavy metals is associated with cancer occurrence at various body sites including lung, liver, bladder, colon, and skin. Much research effort has been placed on discovering the mechanisms by which heavy metals induce different kinds of cancers. Results f Read More

The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) plays a critical role in the regulation of cell growth, proliferation, and metabolism by integrating growth factor stimulation and energy/nutrient input through a complex signaling network. The mTOR kinase is a part of two structurally and functionally distinct multiple protein complexes, mTORC1 and mTORC2. The mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) is ra Read More

Dendritic cells (DCs) have traditionally been viewed as constituting an ‘information management’ system that functions solely to integrate a diverse array of incoming signals, in order to induce immune reactivity. In recent years, however, there has been a shift towards viewing these cells as key regulators in the orchestration of immunological tolerance, with increasing recognition that they are capable of suppressing T-cell respo Read More

Background and Aim: Heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) and mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) are involved in the molecular pathogenesis of advanced oral squamous cell carcinoma. HSP90 inhibitors are capable of effectively interfering with multiple signaling pathways, including the mTOR signaling pathway. However, the combined effects of HSP90 and mTOR inhibitors on oral squamous cell carcinoma are still unkno Read More

The recent discoveries of genomic and molecular markers in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) have improved the understanding about the complexity of the signal transduction pathways as well as their relevance in normal and liver cancer cells. The identification of the functional repercussions of punctual mutations and crosstalk among cell signaling will promote the identification of specific combinatorial targeted Read More

Biological agents, such as multikinase inhibitors and mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitors, have replaced immunotherapy as the standard of care for metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC). Several clinical trials have been performed, aimed to identify new feasible therapeutic targets. AKT, PI3K, STAT3, NOTCH-1, α5β1-integrin, CD70 and G250 are just examples of these opening frontiers. Novel agents, combina Read More

One of the major causes of failure in cancer chemotherapy is multidrug resistance (MDR), where cancer cells simultaneously become resistant to different anticancer drugs. Over-expression of membrane efflux pumps like Pglycoprotein (P-gp) that recognizes different chemotherapeutic agents and transports them out of the cell, plays a major role in MDR. The shortcoming of P-gp inhibitors in clinic has been attributed to their no Read More