Current Cancer Therapy Reviews - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2007

The field of cancer therapy is rapidly moving forward with the development of numerous prospective new agents designed to inhibit cellular factors involved in signal transduction, cell proliferation, and the onset of apoptosis. At the core of these biological processes are transcription factors that are the functional mediators of these effects. Transcription factors are the downstream targets of numerous signal transduction pathwa Read More

Somatic cells show a spontaneous decline in growth rate in continuous culture. This is not related to elapsed time but to an increasing number of population doublings, eventually terminating in a quiescent but viable state, termed replicative senescence. These cells are commonly multinucleated and do not respond to mitogens or apoptotic stimuli. Cells displaying characteristics of senescent cells can also be obser Read More

Although Hox genes have been identified as master regulatory genes controlling embryonic development, an alternative view on the role of the Hox gene network suggests that it regulates crucial processes at cellular level in eukaryotic organisms. The Hox network acts at the nuclear cell level as a decoding system for external inductive signals to activate specific genetic programs. Cancer can be considered as an anomal Read More

Prostate cancer is predicted to be the most common cancer diagnosed in American men in 2006 with an estimated 230,000 new cases in the United States alone [1]. It is likely to result in over 27,000 deaths in 2006, and the average male will have a one in six chance of developing this malady in his lifetime [1]. These statistics illustrate the need to have screening and treatment systems in place that possess both a high Read More

Allogeneic stem cell transplantation has become an important treatment option for many children with malignant and non malignant diseases during the past decades. However, this therapy was for a long time restricted to patients having an “HLA identical donor”. In most recent years donor registries all over the world have extended and the numbers of registered volunteers have substantially increased during the last Read More

According to the American Cancer Society, there will be an estimated 14,520 new cases of esophageal cancer and 174,470 new cases of lung cancer in 2005 [1]. Close to 60% of these patients with esophageal cancer will present at an advanced stage not amenable to cure, but still will require palliation of their dysphagia [2]. Conventional plastic stents (CPS) were used initially, and with continuous improvement in techno Read More

Adenocarcinoma of the pancreas is the fourth leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Because of the poor therapeutic responsiveness of pancreatic cancer to surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, survival beyond five years is rare with median survival less than six months. K-ras mutations have been identified in up to 95% of pancreatic cancers, implying their critical role in the molecular pathogenesis. Ras o Read More

Breast cancer remains the commonest malignancy amongst women and its incidence continues to increase worldwide. This inexorable rise in numbers of women suffering from the disease is particularly notable in those countries which previously had a relatively low incidence of breast cancer but have now adopted Western lifestyles with changes in reproductive behaviour and greater usage of the oral contraceptive pill. Read More