Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 13, Issue 5, 2007

The current issue of CPD focuses on novel targets for cancer therapy as well as the development of therapies that take advantage of newly emerging information on carcinogenesis and tumor survival mechanisms. Such treatments may hold the key to successful cancer treatment and long-term survival of patients with otherwise poor prognosis. T. Okamoto et al. [1] review the regulatory function of NF-κ B for various g Read More

NF-κB is an inducible transcription factor that is controlled by the signal activation cascades. NF-κB controls a number of genes involved in immuno-inflammatory responses, cell cycle progression, inhibition of apoptosis and cell adhesion, thus promoting carcinogenesis and cancer progression. Interestingly, some proteins encoded by oncogenes and oncogenic viruses have been shown to be involved in NF-κB activation pathway. Read More

The evidence that cancer development is a complex and multistep process, characterized by alterations of genes involved in the regulation of proliferation, apoptosis and angiogenesis, has led to development of new therapeutic strategies based on the use of agents able to selectively inhibit key molecules of these pathways. In particular, antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) have proved their efficacy as targeted therapy i Read More

The 26S proteasome is a multicatalytic intracellular protease expressed in eukaryotic cells. It is responsible for selective degradation of intracellular proteins that are responsible for cell proliferation, growth, regulation of apoptosis and transcription of genes involved in execution of key cellular functions. Thus proteasome inhibition is a potential treatment option for cancer and diseases due to aberrant inflammation condition. Tr Read More

It is a current idea that carcinogenesis as well as tumor progression are dynamic processes, which involve inherited as well as somatic mutations and include a continuing adaptation to different microenvironmental conditions. There is, in fact, rising evidence that tumor cells are under a persistent stress and that autocrine as well as microenvironment- derived survival factors play a substantial role for the final outcome of Read More

Breast cancer is the most frequent tumor of women. The development of effective adjuvant therapy based on postoperative administration of short-term chemotherapy (4-6 months) or long-term hormone therapy (5 years) or both, significantly improved survival of patients. However, therapy of adjuvant/metastatic disease is still palliative with a very low probability to induce complete remission and definitive cure of dis Read More

In current applied radiobiology, there exists a tremendous effort in basic and translational research to identify novel treatment modalities combining ionizing radiation with anticancer agents. This is mainly due to the highly improved molecular understanding of intrinsic radioresistance and the profiling of cellular stress responses to irradiation during recent years. Ionizing radiation not only damages DNA but also affects Read More

Although TNF antitumor activity has been demonstrated in many preclinical models and in non-comparative clinical trials, no evidence exists that TNF-based treatments increase patient survival. Moreover, due to systemic toxicity, TNF can only be administered through sophisticated locoregional drug-delivery systems in patients with some types of organ-confined solid tumors; as a corollary, the impossibility to admini Read More