Current Cancer Drug Targets - Volume 2, Issue 4, 2002

The influence of natural products upon drug discovery in general has been quite impressive, one only has to look at the number of clinically active drugs that are in use in cancer therapy to see how many either are natural products or have a natural product pharmacophore. What is now becoming quite apparent is that materials from natural sources are excellent probes (indicators) for cellular targets that when modulate Read More

The cell cycle is a highly conserved and ordered set of events, culminating in cell growth and division. It is tightly controlled by many regulatory mechanisms that either permit or restrain its progression. The main families of regulatory proteins that play key roles in controlling cell cycle progression are the cyclins, the cyclin dependent kinases (Cdks), their substrate proteins, the Cdk inhibitors (CKI) and the tumor suppres Read More

The anticancer properties of histone deacetylase inhibitors have been known for some time. However, it is only recently that the functional identities of the intracellular targets mediating the anticancer properties have started to be revealed. These targets appear to play significant roles in cell cycle control, apoptosis and differentiation. Importantly, the modulation of these activities is likely to be mediated by alterations in Read More

The function of gene products can be altered at many levels, including the mutation of gene sequence and the change in steady state levels of mRNA and / or protein by various mechanisms. The cumulative malfunction of specific gene products underlies many pathological conditions such as the multi-step and multi-cause acquisition of cancer. Here we discuss two oligonucleotide-based strategies in which these compounds Read More