Outsmarting cancer - new results from novel enzyme ...( and normal programmed cell death....),Health

In cancer cells normal programmed cell death goes wrong and the cancer cells become immortal. PS-341 is a proteasome inhibitor. It induces the cancer cell to commit suicide by interfering with the proteasome that is allowing the cancer cells to divide uncontrollably. PS-341 has already shown promise against haematological cancers and Dr Johnston is involved with the first trials in breast cancer.

More than half of cancer deaths are due to drug resistance: patients respond well to treatment for a while and then the treatment stops working as the cancer cells learn how to fight back.

Said Dr. Johnston: "Its very early days yet for these novel drugs and we must not be over optimistic, but they are a new generation of drugs rationally designed to target key enzymes. As such they are potentially very important, especially if, as the accumulating evidence indicates, they enhance the activity of existing conventional therapies and prevent or reverse hormone or cytotoxic drug resistance."

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Contact: Margaret Willson
m.willson@mwcommunications.org.uk
34-93-3644487
Federation of European Cancer Societies
21-Mar-2002