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© Oxford University Press 2007.
NEWS |
THE FRAGILE TUMOR
New Insights Into Oncogene Addiction Found
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
A mystery surrounds targeted anticancer drugs like trastuzumab (Herceptin), imatinib (Gleevec), and erlotinib (Tarceva), agents that block the specific signaling pathways thought to drive cancer cell proliferation. For all the molecular sophistication of these new drugs, we know little about why and how they actually work without greatly harming patients. The targets of these drugs are present and active in normal cells as well as tumor cells. So why do targeted drugs kill cancer cells without massive toxic effects?
The answer may lie in the study of oncogene addiction, a relatively new area of cancer research. I. Bernard Weinstein, M.D., of Columbia University, conceived the theory of addiction in 1997, after he observed that only partially blocking cyclin D1 (a protein required for cell division) was enough to arrest the growth of cancer cells overexpressing the protein. "These particular cancer cells needed a very high level of oncogene to
Evidence for Addiction
Getting Hooked
Addicted Environment
Treating the Addiction