Current Cancer Drug Targets - Volume 4, Issue 8, 2004

Highly specific signal transduction inhibitors are being developed as anti-cancer agents against an array of molecular targets, with the promise of increased selectivity and lower toxicity than classic cytotoxic chemotherapy agents. Rapamycin and its analogues are a promising class of novel therapeutics that specifically inhibit signaling from the serine-threonine kinase, mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR). mTOR is a key Read More

Head and neck cancer, the sixth most common type of cancer worldwide, is associated with a dismal prognosis that has minimally improved during the last few decades. Future advances in the treatment and prognosis of this fatal disease largely rely upon a better understanding of the molecular events that underlie tumor development and progression, allowing specific targeting of the involved molecules and pathways. Read More

Wnt proteins are a large family of secreted glycoproteins. Wnt proteins bind to the Frizzled receptors and LRP5/6 co-receptors, and through stabilizing the critical mediator β-catenin, initiate a complex signaling cascade that plays an important role in regulating cell proliferation and differentiation. Deregulation of the canonical Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway, mostly by inactivating mutations of the APC tumor suppr Read More

Colon, breast and lung adenocarcinomas - three of the major malignancies occurring in humans, together with ovarian, endometrial, kidney and liver adenocarcinomas, account for more then 50% of cancerrelated death. As the number of cancer-related deaths has not decreased in recent years, major efforts are being made to find new and more specific drugs for cancer treatment. One of the approaches developed in rec Read More

Patients with advanced solid tumors frequently relapse and succumb to their metastatic disease after developing resistance to conventional treatment modalities such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy. In these patients, novel strategies of targeting widespread tumors are urgently needed. The increasing knowledge of the underlying pathogenetic mechanisms has led to the identification of numerous molecules that Read More