Posts tagged ‘targeted therapies’
Sally Church, PhD on Pharma Strategy Blog has written about research on macrophage cell surface protein S100A10 and the role this plays in cancer metastasis and tumor growth.
As Sally notes, “macrophages are critical in driving tumour growth, invasion and metastasis. Macrophages are like the Pacmen of cells…” What a great visual metaphor!
Recently published research now shows that the macrophage cell surface protein, S100A10 plays an important role in how macrophages move to the site of tumor growth, a process that is key to tumor development and angiogenesis.
Is S100A10 a potential druggable target? You will have to read Sally’s insightful blog post to learn more.
That’s the question that Icarus Consultants’ oncology expert, Sally Church, Ph.D answers on Pharma Strategy Blog.
In an insightful post about “New mechanisms of resistance to MET inhibition,” Sally discusses research by Jeffrey Engelman, Jie Que and colleagues from Mass General recently published in the AACR journal, Cancer Discovery.
Gastric cancer cells have been observed to have an “oncogene addiction” to MET, so impairing or inactivating MET provides a rational for targeted therapies.
However, given that cancer calls can “escape” from an oncogene addiction through mutations or other pathways, combination therapies are often the approach to follow.
Sally proposes on Pharma Strategy Blog that “combining MET and EGFR inhibitors in gastric cancer may be a viable therapeutic strategy.”
Nanotechnology is expected to provide major breakthroughs in how drugs cross the blood-brain barrier and reach into tumors. That promise is already starting to be seen.
Research by Julia Ljubimova and her team at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center was recently published in the AACR journal, Cancer Research. They showed that biodegradable nanoparticles containing trastuzumab (herceptin), dramatically reduced HER2/neu protein activity in mice containing human HER2/neu positive breast tumors.
As Sally Church in her thoughtful post about this research on Pharma Strategy Blog, states, “it will be most interesting to see if this idea is developed clinically in human trials and whether the results will be reproducible or not.”
Nanotechnology and the development of nanoparticles that deliver drugs more effectively and with less toxicity, is an area that all new products professionals should be watching.
Icarus Consultants’ oncology new products guru, Sally Church, has published a fascinating post on Pharma Strategy Blog on how Zebrafish models of melanoma are providing new drug targets.
Sally discusses recent research published in Nature that shows the histone methyltransferase SETDB1 is an oncogene that accelerates melanoma formation in co-operation with BRAF(V600E).
What makes this research exciting is the potential of zebrafish as a platform for cancer gene discovery.
Sally Church, PhD will be attending the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 2011 annual meeting in Orlando that starts this Saturday.
This meeting offers insight into the next generation of PI3K, Akt and mTOR inhibitors, and which compounds have promise for future clinical development.
This is Sally’s favorite meeting of the year as it gives a relaxed opportunity to meet with leading scientists in preclinical drug development and translational medicine.
There will be over 5000 posters, so we hope Sally goes with comfortable shoes for all the walking! You can read updates from the meeting on Pharma Strategy Blog.
Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog, today discusses personalized therapy for prostate cancer, and the extent to which this is possible?
Following the recent AACR special conference on the PI3K-mTor pathway, Sally shares some of the key learnings for oncology drug development and translational medicine.
Her opinion is that “in the future, targeted therapies may evolve in smaller subsets of disease with more logical or double or even triple combinations.”
In an insightful post on Pharma Strategy Blog, Sally discusses recent research that suggests there may be a market opportunity for anti-SPINK1 monoclonal antibodies that target a subset of prostate cancer patients. Breathtaking stuff!
Groundbreaking research on identification of ZNF703 oncogene in breast cancer
February 21st, 2011
Daedalus
Sally Church on the Pharma Strategy Blog analyzes the significance of new research that has identified a new oncogene associated with 1 in 12 breast cancers.
Research published by Holland et al, in the journal, EMBO Molecular Medicine, has identified the ZNF703 oncogene to be linked with Luminal B breast cancer.
This is the first oncogene to be discovered in 5 years since HER2, and has tremendous potential as a target for drug development.
As Sally comments on her blog “it’s much easier to design a drug or therapeutic once you have a valid target to aim for and with more specific targeting, comes improved patient outcomes.”
This is important news and Sally’s blog post has more in-depth insight and analysis.
A recent paper in The Journal of Clinical Investigation by Lee et al, presents interesting results on the use of N-terminal truncated carboxypeptidase E splice isoform as a biomarker to predict cancer metastasis.
You can read Sally Church’s analysis about whether we can predict when cancer will spread on the Pharma Strategy Blog.
Adding the new Google Custom Search feature to Sally Church’s Pharma Strategy Blog allows readers to delve into 800 posts for insight and analysis on oncology, hematology, targeted therapies, pathways, new products, marketing strategy, science, clinical research, translational medicine, social media and much more.
Check the new Google powered search feature on Pharma Strategy Blog