Current Cancer Drug Targets - Volume 2, Issue 1, 2002

The maintenance of specialized nucleoprotein structures at the ends of human chromosomes called telomeres is essential for chromosome stability, and plays a fundamental role in the regulation of cellular lifespan. Without new synthesis of telome-res, chromosome ends shorten with progressive cell division, eventually triggering either replicative senescence or apoptosis when telomere length becomes critically short. Read More

Patients with widespread cancer respond initially to combination chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and / or radiotherapy, but most relapse with chemoresistant disease. Novel methods of killing resistant neoplastic stem cells are needed. One such approach is therapy with targeted toxins composed of tumor cell selective ligands covalently linked to group I peptide toxins (group II and III peptide toxins act on the cell surface Read More

Acquired drug resistance continues to be one of the major obstacles hindering the successful treatment of many forms of cancer. Compounds utilized as antagonists of these cytoprotective mechanisms have, for the most part, proven to be ineffective at overcoming clinical resistance to cytotoxic drugs. Recently, the tumor cell microenvironment has been found to have a significant bearing on the survival of tumor cells f Read More

Wild-type Wilms' tumor gene WT1 is expressed at high levels not only in most of acute myelocytic, acute lymphocytic, and chronic myelocytic leukemia, but also in various types of solid tumors including lung cancer. We tested the ability of the gene product (WT1) to serve as a target antigen for tumor -specific immunotherapy both in human in vitro system and mouse in vivo system. In the latter, we can evaluate the e Read More

The sulfonamides constitute an important class of drugs, with several types of pharmacological agents possessing antibacterial, anti-carbonic anhydrase, diuretic, hypoglycemic and antithyroid activity among others. A host of structurally novel sulfonamide derivatives have recently been reported to show substantial antitumor activity in vitro and / or in vivo. Although they have a common chemical motif of aromatic / heter Read More

For many years, the vitamin A metabolite retinoic acid (RA) has been known to have profound effects on development, cellular proliferation and differentiation, and tumor growth and invasion. The wide-ranging effects of RA on cellular proliferation and migration have made it a useful chemotherapeutic agent in the treatment of many types of cancer. In the last fifteen years, with the discovery of nuclear receptors for Read More