CDK is one of the key target (at many bts and pharma) in new approach to cancer therapy:
foxnews.com
Scientists Look to Starfish for New Cancer Drugs
1.35 p.m. ET (1735 GMT) May 19, 1999
By Patricia Reaney
<FN_ARTICLELONDON — British scientists are betting that starfishes living in the North Sea will be the source of the next generation of anti-cancer drugs.
Researchers from the Cancer Research Campaign (CRC), Oxford University and the newly formed Anglo-Swedish drugs giant AstraZeneca have joined forces to use an enzyme from starfishes to develop tumour suppressor drugs.
The new treatments would target just the cancerous cells so could be more effective and less toxic than conventional chemotherapy.
"We will be able to hit the Achilles heel of the tumour and avoid all the unpleasant side effects," Professor Herbie Newell, of the CRC, told a news conference on Wednesday.
The research involves enzymes known as Cyclin Dependent Kinases (CDKs) which are found in humans and are abundant in starfish eggs. CDKs control the orderly division of cells which goes awry when cancer develops.
Genes, particularly a major tumour suppressor gene called P53, orchestrate the activity of CDKs, but they are often damaged in tumors so the cancerous cells multiply out of control.
Newell and a team of researchers at Newcastle University in northern England have found a small molecule in the enzyme which they hope will be the basis of new drugs that will do the same thing as p53 and other tumour suppressor genes if they weren't damaged.
Because P53 is abnormal in many cancers a drug that mimics its action could be effective in a variety of cancers.
"The challenge now is to develop inhibitors of CDKs which we hope will stop tumors," said Newell.
To do that, he is collaborating with scientists at Oxford University who can generate three dimensional computer images of CDKs that could speed up the development of new drugs.
Newell and his colleagues hope to have new treatments in early clinical trials within three years.
Professor Gordon McVie, the director general of the CRC, said he is convinced that finding drug targets such as kinases is "the way to go" in new cancer treatments.
The CRC is already testing anti-cancer drugs derived from marine organisms. The drug Bryostatin, based on a type of sea moss, is in early clinical trials for ovarian cancer and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Dolastatin, which is derived from a type of sea mollusc, is also being tested in human trials of prostate, lung and skin cancer.
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