Current Cancer Drug Targets - Volume 9, Issue 1, 2009

The very early intuition of Paget about the molecular feature of metastasis has come in the field of therapeutic opportunities only in the last few years with the development of targeted therapy. However, to date the diagnosis of metastases is associated in the majority of cases with the loss of any therapeutic hope. According to present knowledge, metastatic spreading is considered as part of a long process in which tumor cell Read More

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a clonal proliferation of early B- and T-lymphocyte progenitors and results in the accumulation of leukemic blasts in the bone marrow and various extramedullary sites. It affects both children and adults, with peak prevalence between the ages of 2 to 5 years. Despite current treatment protocols achieving rapid cytoreduction in the vast majority of patients, serious acute and late complic Read More

The urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA) system (uPAS) consists of the uPA, its cognate receptor (uPAR) and two specific inhibitors, the plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 (PAI-1) and 2 (PAI-2). The uPA converts the proenzyme plasminogen in the serine protease plasmin, involved in a number of physiopathological processes requiring basement membrane (BM) and/or extracellular matrix (ECM) remodelling, including tu Read More

Epidermal growth factor (EGF) and its receptor (EGFR) as well as the EGFR-coupled Ras>Raf>MEK>ERK pathway are known to affect the survival of cancer cells upon chemotherapeutic treatment. In the present investigation, we analyzed the role of EGFR signaling pathways for the activity of artesunate towards cancer cells. The microarray-based mRNA expression of genes involved in EGFR signaling pathway was correlated w Read More

The chronic lung inflammatory activity and carcinogenicity of nickel compounds have been well documented by previous studies from epidemiology both in vitro and in vivo. However, the molecular mechanism involved in nickelinduced chronic lung inflammation is much less understood. The current study demonstrates that exposure of human bronchial epithelial cells (Beas-2B) to nickel compounds results in the induction of t Read More

Histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors are currently used in the study of epigenetics and have potential in clinical cancer therapy. A novel and potent HDAC inhibitor, depsipeptide, also known as FK228 or FR901228, is highly efficient in inhibiting the activity of HDACs even at nanomolar concentrations. Depsipeptide has a unique structure that is distinct from most of the other HDACs, and it thus exhibits diverse pharmaco Read More

DNA interstrand crosslinkers, a chemically diverse group of compounds which also induce alkylation of bases and DNA intrastrand crosslinks, are extensively utilized for cancer therapy. Understanding the cellular response to DNA damage induced by these agents is critical for more effective utilization of these compounds and for the identification of novel therapeutic targets. Importantly, the repair of DNA interstrand crosslin Read More