Current Cancer Drug Targets - Volume 3, Issue 2, 2003

Transport mechanisms for the exclusion of toxic xenobiotics and their metabolites from cellular environment are crucial for living organisms. Accumulation of these toxins may affect a number of regulatory and other functions, ultimately leading to cell death. This trafficking of toxins and their metabolites is an energy dependent, primary active process, involving the hydrolysis of nucleotide triphosphates (ATP or GTP), whil Read More

Oncogenic Ras proteins have been seen as an important target for novel anticancer drugs. Due to the functional role of Ras farnesylation, fanesyltransferase (FTase) inhibition was thought to be a strategy for interfering with Ras-dependent transformation. When farnesylation is blocked, the function of Ras protein is severely impaired because of the inability of the nonfarnesylated protein to anchor to the membrane. Alth Read More

Techniques for the construction of phage display libraries of combinatorial proteins have dramatically improved. This has allowed researchers to expand the applications to the field of cancer biology. The most direct use of protein phage-displayed libraries is the selection of ligands for individual proteins. This includes identification of peptide ligands for receptor signaling molecules: integrins, cytokine and growth factor r Read More

Survivin, an inhibitor of apoptosis (IAP) containing one baculovirus IAP repeat (BIR) domain, has been reported to be capable of regulating both cellular proliferation and apoptotic cell death. Survivin splice variants, survivin-ΔEx3 and survivin-2B, have apparently retained and lost anti-apoptotic potential, respectively. As survivin was first discovered due to its high homology with effector cell protease receptor (EPR-1), a Read More

Replicative senescence is a programmed cellular response in normal cells, the induction of which depends on the accumulated number of cell divisions. Unlike cells undergoing apoptosis, senescent cells have a large and flat morphology, express acidic β-galactosidase (β-gal) and show a permanent cell cycle G1 phase arrest. Recently, senescent-like growth arrest has been observed in many types of tumor cell lines after Read More