Current Cancer Drug Targets - Volume 13, Issue 8, 2013

The resistance of tumors to a number of structurally and functionally unrelated chemotherapeutic drugs has been a major obstacle for successful cancer chemotherapy. An important mechanism leading to multidrug resistance (MDR) is the overexpression of the 170 kDa P-glycoprotein (P-gp), which is a member of the ATP-binding cassette (ABC) superfamily of membrane transporters, encoded by the MDR1 gene. Aiming to ov Read More

The aim of this study was to establish the role of serine/threonine protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) in the survival of leukemic cells from patients with adult T cell leukemia (ATL), associated with human T cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1). In HTLV-1-infected T cell lines and ATL cells, okadaic acid (OkA), a potent PP2A inhibitor, induced decrease in cell viability and G1 cell cycle arrest by decreasing the expression levels of cyclin D2, Read More

Malignant melanoma is an extremely aggressive and metastatic cancer, highly resistant to conventional treatment modalities. Understanding of fundamental mechanisms responsible for its genesis and progression is critical for development of successful chemotherapeutic treatment. It is becoming clear that melanoma results from complex changes in multiple signaling pathways that control cell proliferation and ability to Read More

Hepatocellular cancer (HCC) is the third cause of death by cancer worldwide. In the current study we target &bgr- catenin, an oncogene mutated and constitutively active in 20-30% of HCCs, via a novel, cell permeable gamma guanidine-based peptide nucleic acid (γGPNA) antisense oligonucleotide designed against either the transcription or the translation start site of the human &bgr-catenin gene. Using TOPflash, a l Read More

Melanoma, a malignant tumor of melanocytes, causes the majority (75%) of all skin cancer-related deaths. The overall efficacy of different anti-cancer therapies on metastatic melanoma is quite limited, due to its high resistance to all forms of conventional treatments, including chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy, leading to low patient survival rates. The present review identifies possible strategies Read More

Prions are renowned for their role in neurodegenerative diseases in humans and animals. These are manifested as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) that result from the conversion of the normal glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) anchored cellular prion protein (PrPc) to a misfolded, aggregated and pathogenic form, prion protein scrapie (PrPSc) via a post-translational process followed by the accumulation Read More