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© 2005 Oxford University Press
NEWS |
New Checkpoint Blockers Begin Human Trials
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
If a tumor cell were envisioned as a car with defective brakes and a stuck accelerator, will cutting the emergency brake force it to crash? Or, in biological terms, will using a drug to eliminate cell cycle checkpoints after giving DNA-damaging chemotherapy or radiation kill tumors more effectively than chemotherapy or radiation alone?
The question is not new. In a 1994 paper, Lee Hartwell, Ph.D., then at the University of Washington in Seattle, and Michael Kastan, M.D., Ph.D., of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, speculated that drugs that target the checkpoint at G2—the gap between DNA replication and mitosis—might someday be used against human tumors. Such checkpoint genes, they wrote, "if and when they are identified, will be logical targets for inhibition in order to increase cancer cell kill after exposure to certain antineoplastic therapies."
Now the theory is being tested in humans. In May 2005, the biotech company
Some Companies With Products That Target Cell Cycle Checkpoints in Cancer
A Cell Cycle Breakthrough
Ready for Prime Time
Double-edged Sword?
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