Current Cancer Therapy Reviews - Volume 9, Issue 4, 2013

Spontaneous autoantibody responses against tumor-associated antigens have been detected in all types of cancer analyzed so far. Recent studies have shown that cancer-associated autoantibodies can be found in the serum of patients even several years before the clinical diagnosis. Furthermore, they may at least partially reflect the antigenic profile of cancer and the balance of immune cell subsets in the tumor micr Read More

The literature concerning the design of large-scale high-throughput multiplexed genotyping assays for profiling tumour somatic mutations, and studies of their validation and prospective clinical use in guiding targeted therapies, is reviewed. Reports of the design and development of genotyping approaches for the simultaneous detection of numerous oncogenic driver mutations in many known cancer genes first appe Read More

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a clonal lymphoid disease characterized by the proliferation and accumulation of small CD5/CD19/CD23-positive lymphocytes in the blood, lymph nodes, spleen, liver and bone morrow. The management of CLL is determined by the stage and activity of the disease, age and comorbidities. Currently available therapies are only partially efficient, exposing an obvious need to develop better Read More

The presence of small amounts of circulating DNA in plasma was demonstrated 60 years ago. Since then, cellfree DNA has been tested for quantity, fragmentation pattern and tumor-specific sequences in patients with various malignancies. The introduction of improved detection methods showed that all these alterations are regularly detectable in many cancer patients and the investigation of cell-free DNA may p Read More

The post genome era has ushered us into therapeutic target discovery empowering us to mine the genome using rational approaches. Numerous cancer targets have emerged from the genome project for diagnostics, therapeutics and response to therapy prediction. Among thousands of genes predicted in the human genome, nearly half of them remain uncharacterized. Considerable attention in the last decade has focus Read More

Adenocarcinoma of the pancreas is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States. Therapeutic responsiveness of pancreatic cancer to surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy is poor, resulting in a dismal 5-year survival of less than 3%. Point mutation of the K-ras oncogene is a common event in the early development of pancreatic cancer. Indeed, K-ras mutations occur in up to 95% of pancreatic c Read More