Tag Archives: pharmacology

New therapeutic target may improve treatment for brain cancer

The research will be presented at the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) Annual Meeting during Experimental Biology 2015. Monteagudo’s research indicates a new possible chemotherapeutic target for treating GBM: transglutaminase 2 (TG2), a multifunctional protein that can regulate cell adhesion and motility. Given these documented functions of TG2, Monteagudo and her colleagues in the laboratory of Gail Johnson, Ph.D., at the University of Rochester, were interested in determining if TG2 played an important role in GBM cell growth. …

Researchers map paths to cancer drug resistance

By mapping the specific steps that cells of melanoma, breast cancer and a blood cancer called myelofibrosis use to become resistant to drugs, the researchers now have much better targets for blocking those pathways and keeping current therapies effective. The findings are published in two papers Dec. 23, 2014, in the journal Science Signaling. “Clinical resistance to anticancer therapies is a major problem,” said lead author Kris Wood, Ph.D., assistant professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Duke…

Prostate cancer’s penchant for copper may be a fatal flaw — ScienceDaily

Researchers at Duke Medicine have found a way to kill prostate cancer cells by delivering a trove of copper along with a drug that selectively destroys the diseased cells brimming with the mineral, leaving non-cancer cells healthy. The combination approach, which uses two drugs already commercially available for other uses, could soon be tested in clinical trials among patients with late-stage disease. “This proclivity for copper uptake is something we have known could be an Achilles’ heel in prostate cancer tumors as well as other cancers,” said Donald McDonnell, Ph.D., chairman of the Duke Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology and senior author of a study published Oct. …

Gobbling up poison: Method for killing colon cancer

Now researchers at Thomas Jefferson University have discovered the unique biological properties inherent to colon cancer that make it a perfect candidate for immunotoxins — an antibody that won’t attach to normal cells and a toxin-delivery system that takes advantage of a fluke of biology: Colon cancer cells will gobble up poison if it’s attached to a key receptor on the cell’s surface. Indeed, the researchers demonstrated that the novel immunotoxin they created could reduce the lung metastasis in mice, which had grown out from colon cancers, by more than 80 percent with only 6 doses, in research published September 8th, 2014 in the journal Oncotarget. “These studies pave the way for effective antibody-directed therapy for metastatic disease in colorectal cancer, which currently carries a greater than 90 percent chance of mortality” says Scott Waldman, M.D., Ph.D., Chair of the Department of Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics and the Samuel MV Hamilton Professor at Thomas Jefferson University. Dr…

New tool aids stem cell engineering for medical research

“This free platform has a broad range of uses for all types of cell-based investigations and can potentially offer help to people working on all types of cancer,” says Hu Li, Ph.D., investigator in the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine and Department of Molecular Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics, and co-lead investigator in the two works. “CellNet will indicate how closely an engineered cell resembles the real counterpart and even suggests ways to adjust the engineering.” The network biology platform contains data on a wide range of cells and details on what is known about those cell types. Researchers say the platform can be applied to almost any study and allows users to refine the engineering process. In the long term, it should provide a reliable short cut to the early phases of drug development, individualized cancer therapies, and pharmacogenetics. …

Researchers identify a mechanism that stops progression of abnormal cells into cancer

Although the link between abnormal cells and tumor suppressor pathways — like that mediated by the well known p53 gene — has been firmly established, the critical steps in between are not well understood. According to the authors, whose work appears in Cell, this work completes at least one of the missing links. Normal human cells contain 23 pairs of chromosomes, but this number doubles to 46 pairs as a cell prepares to divide…

Researchers target rapid destruction of protein responsible for cancer cell resistance to therapy

“These findings may lead to a new target for chemoresistant cancer cells,” said Ruth W. Craig, PhD, professor of Pharmacology & Toxicology, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Hanover, NH, who is primary author of the peer reviewed article. “These cells are resistant to multiple types of standard chemotherapeutic agents because of over-expression of Myeloid Cell Leukemia-1 (Mcl-1), however, Mcl-1 expression plummets when we inhibit one particular enzyme and then cancer cells subsequently die.” The Mcl-1 protein is frequently over-expressed in cancer; it is present not only in leukemia and lymphoma but also in a host of solid tumors. …