Targets on the horizon: Emerging therapies and nov...( SAN FRANCISCO What are the cancer d...),Health

SAN FRANCISCO What are the cancer drugs of tomorrow and how will they be developed" Today, at the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics, researchers will present some answers to these and other pressing questions regarding emerging cancer therapeutics.

New targets, such as cell signaling receptors found on cancer tumors, provide tantalizing targets for engineered antibodies and small inhibitory molecules. New therapeutic technologies, such as virus-based therapy against cancers metastasized to nerve cells and a unique two-headed antibody that attaches killer T cells to tumor cells, offer promising methods for controlling disease.

A team of researchers from Cancer Research Technology based at University College London report for the first time CRT0059359, a small molecule inhibitor of protein kinase D (PKD), a key part of a chemical signaling pathway that is disrupted in a variety of cancers, including pancreatic cancer.

Thought to be involved in a number of cellular processes, PKD plays a vital role in cell division signaling leading to tumor cell proliferation, and in apoptosis, or programmed cell death.

We think this is the first viable protein kinase D inhibitor that has come to light and our studies using this molecule validate protein kinase D as an anti-cancer target, said lead researcher Lloyd Kelland, Ph.D., D.Sc., head of biology at Cancer Research Technology. In cell and animal models of pancreatic cancer, this particular molecule appears to effectively induce apoptosis.

According to Kelland, their previous studies demonstrated that blocking the gene that produced PKD drastically reduced the survival of a human pancreatic cell culture. To find an effective inhibitor for PKD, the researchers initially screened over 65,000 molecules
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