Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 7, Issue 16, 2001

Background: The incidence of brain and other central nervous system malignant neoplasias is 6.5 cases per 100,000 inhabitants-years, and appears to increase with increasing age (1.2 percent per year), with the greatest rate of increase in the population over age 70 years. Material and methods: Chemotherapy remains part of the treatment that includes surgery and radiation therapy for the management of malignant gl Read More

Ras is a 21 kDa membrane-localized G protein that is coupled to receptor and non-receptor tyrosine kinase activation of downstream cytoplasmic and nuclear events. Mutated ras genes are common, and occur in a wide variety of human malignancies. These activating mutations result in constitutive signaling, thereby stimulating cell proliferation and inhibiting apoptosis. Preclinically, inhibitors of ras signaling revert ras-dep Read More

The development of drug resistance is considered to be a major cause for the failure of chemotherapy in a number of types of cancer, including ovarian, breast and lung. Most previous research has focused on approaches to reverse drug resistance once it has arisen, that is, on the use of agents which can make drug-resistant tumors more sensitive to chemotherapy. Unfortunately, this approach has thus far met with only l Read More

Cancer, only second to heart disease, is a leading cause of death in the United States. Despite many years of cancer research little progress has been made in the treatment of many types of cancer. With the advent of molecular biology and advanced biochemical techniques, we have begun to elucidate the various signaling pathways that account for the transformation of normal cells to malignant cells. Our understanding of Read More

Agents that interact with cytoskeletal elements such as tubulin include synthetic spiroketal pyrans (SPIKET), targeting the spongistatin binding site of beeta-tubulin, and monotetrahydrofuran compounds (COBRA compounds), targeting a unique binding cavity on alpha-tubulin. At nanomolar concentrations, the SPIKET compound SPIKET-P caused tubulin depolymerization and demonstrated potent cytotoxic activity against can Read More

Despite some interesting pilot experiments more than a century ago, nucleic acid has only recently been added to the list of agents used for the prevention and therapy of cancer. Two distinct features of nucleic acids are used for this purpose: in DNA and RNA vaccines, genetic information for pathogen- or tumor-derived antigens is delivered to the host who then produces the encoded antigen and initiates an immune response. Read More

The protein kinase family presents remarkable opportunities for drug discovery and development targeting mainly to the ATP binding cleft. Cyclin-dependent kinases CDKs control the cell division in by controlling its sub phases. The regulation of CDKs is altered in a number of tumor types, and therefore CDKs are a particularly attractive target group of kinases with reference to proliferative disorders including cancer, but also e Read More

In 1995, a new cytokine termed TRAIL (tumor necrosis factor - related apoptosis-inducing ligand) was discovered and demonstrated to selectively induce programmed cell death in transformed cell lines. Preclinical cytotoxicity studies in mice and nonhuman primates have produced promising results by demonstrating that TRAIL exerts potent tumoricidal activity but lacks severe toxicity towards normal tissues making it a potent Read More