Current Cancer Drug Targets - Volume 4, Issue 3, 2004

The serine / threonine kinase Akt functions intracellularly as a cardinal nodal point for a constellation of converging upstream signaling pathways, which involve stimulation of receptor tyrosine kinases such as IGF-1R, HER2 / Neu, VEGF-R, PDGF-R), and an assembly of membrane-localized complexes of receptor-PI-3K and activation of Akt through the second messenger PIP3. The integration of these intracellular signals at t Read More

The cytochrome P450s are an essential group of enzymes involved in metabolism of drugs, foreign chemicals, arachidonic acid, cholesterol, steroids and other important lipids. The cytochrome P450 enzyme system is responsible for much of the phase I metabolism of chemotherapeutic agents. At the simplest level the detoxification properties of the cytochrome P450s are used to help clear a cytotoxic before it results in Read More

Leukotriene A4 hydrolase (LTA4H) is a bifunctional zinc enzyme with the activities of epoxide hydrolase and aminopeptidase. As an epoxide hydrolase, LTA4H catalyzes the hydrolysis of the epoxide LTA4 to the diol, leukotriene B4 (LTB4), which mainly functions as a chemoattractant and an activator of inflammatory cells. As an aminopeptidase, LTA4H may process peptides related to inflammation and host defense. In a c Read More

We review the therapeutic and preventive applications of a retinoid analog (vitamin A and its derivatives) for human cancers. Chemoprevention of cancer is an intervention in the carcinogenic process by chemical agents that block or reverse the malignant transformation of cells. Retinoids are prime candidates for cancer chemoprevention since cancer is characterized by abnormal growth with a lack of differentiation, which co Read More

Protein synthesis plays an important role in the regulation of cell proliferation. While the role of cap-dependent translation in cell transformation has been studied extensively another translation initiation mechanism, internal initiation of cellular mRNAs, emerged recently and is relatively unappreciated and poorly understood. Internal initiation is mediated by IRES elements that are found in the 5' untranslated region (5' UT Read More