Researchers zero in on few proteins as cancer drug target - Xinhua : xinhuanet

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Researchers zero in on few proteins as cancer drug target - Xinhua

Researchers zero in on few proteins as cancer drug target - Xinhua

SAN FRANCISCO, July 28 (Xinhua) -- Researchers with University of California, Berkeley, have found a promising new drug target within the pathway that controls the production of a cancer cell's thousands of proteins and it appears to control production of only a few percent of the proteins critical to regulating the growth and proliferation of cells.The target, according to a study published online Wednesday and in the Aug. 4 print issue of the British journal Nature, is a protein that binds to messenger RNA, or mRNA, and helps get it started along the production line that ends in a fully assembled protein.A drug blocking this binding protein could shut off translation of only the growth-promoting proteins and not other life-critical proteins inside the cell.As mRNA holds the cell's blueprint for making protein, "if cancer cells are making too much mRNA, you could shut them down by preventing them from using that mRNA to make protein," said Jamie Cate, a UC Berkeley professor of molecular and cell biology and of chemistry and leader of the study.


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LI researchers create drug combo to treat pancreatic cancer

LI researchers create drug combo to treat pancreatic cancer

HIGHLIGHTS Disease has vague symptoms, grim survival rateCold Spring Harbor Laboratory investigators take leadMedical investigators at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have developed promising new insight into the basic biology of pancreatic cancer and have produced a novel drug strategy based on their findings, which they hope to soon test in a clinical trial.Cancer of the pancreas is notorious for its vague early symptoms and high death rate, two factors that render it a conundrum compared with other malignancies.No statistic involving the disease is more glaring — and grim — than the one that underlies survival: Fewer than 5 percent of patients are alive five years after diagnosis, doctors sayBut Iok In Christine Chio, an investigator in the laboratory of Dr. David Tuveson, has homed in on the molecular underpinnings of pancreatic cancer.There she found one of nature's long-held secrets: Pancreatic cancer cells are veritable storehouses of antioxidants, the kind produced by cells themselves in the bustling thermodynamics that are fundamental to life.


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Researchers zero in on few proteins as cancer drug target - Xinhua

Researchers zero in on few proteins as cancer drug target - Xinhua

Scientist works in cancer research laboratories at the Old Road Campus research building at Oxford University, in Oxford, Britain May 11, 2016.(REUTERS/File Photo)SAN FRANCISCO, July 28 (Xinhua) -- Researchers with University of California, Berkeley, have found a promising new drug target within the pathway that controls the production of a cancer cell's thousands of proteins and it appears to control production of only a few percent of the proteins critical to regulating the growth and proliferation of cells.The target, according to a study published online Wednesday and in the Aug. 4 print issue of the British journal Nature, is a protein that binds to messenger RNA, or mRNA, and helps get it started along the production line that ends in a fully assembled protein.A drug blocking this binding protein could shut off translation of only the growth-promoting proteins and not other life-critical proteins inside the cell.