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Breaking Discoveries from The Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation
NEW PROGRAM TO CURE LYMPHOMA
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Ari Melnick, MD.
Assistant Professor
Developmental and Molecular Biology and Medicine
Albert Einstein College of Medicine |
Dr. Melnick is studying the molecular causes of lymphoma and devising new targeted therapies for its cure. Along with SWCRF funded colleagues Jonathan Licht, M.D. (Professor and Chief, Division of Hematology/Oncology, Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine) and Gilbert Privé, PhD. (Senior Scientist, Division of Cancer Genomics and Proteomics, Ontario Cancer Institute) he developed a small protein fragment that specifically blocks the action of a protein called BCL6 (B-Cell lymphoma gene #6). Blocking the BCL6 protein is important because it has been found to cause a malignant proliferation of immune cells which manifests itself as lymphoma. Dr. Melnick’s lab showed that this protein fragment acts directly to kill a class of lymphoma cells. In the article cited below, Dr. Melnick and his collaborators at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute report that the BCL6 inhibitor will also act to kill other forms of lymphoma cells.
He and his team are currently developing small chemical inhibitors of BCL6 which may be more readily applied to the treatment of many types of lymphomas.
Jose M. Polo, Przemyslaw Juszczynski, Stefano Monti, Leandro Cerchietti, Kenny Ye, John M. Greally, Margaret Shipp, and Ari Melnick. "Transcriptional signature with differential expression of BCL6 target genes accurately identifies BCL6-dependent diffuse large B cell lymphomas."
PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America)
February 27, 2007, vol. 104, no. 9, 3207-3212; published online before print as 10.1073/pnas.0611399104 http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/104/9/3207 |
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THE USE OF HSP90 PROTEIN INHIBITORS AS ANTICANCER AGENTS |
Neal Rosen, MD., PhD.
Head, Development Therapeutics
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center |
Dr. Rosen's lab studies cell signals that stimulate cell growth and uses this information to develop mechanism-based cancer-specific treatments. Dr. Rosen focuses on inhibitors of Hsp90 protein as anti-cancer agents which can de-activate cancer causing signaling. Treatment with these HSP90 inhibitors cause cancer cell selective death by targeting the HER2 protein which is mutated in breast cancer, the B-Raf protein which is mutated in melanoma and the EGFR protein which is mutated in lung cancer. In a study published by The American Association for Cancer Research’s March 15th edition of Clinical Cancer Research, Dr. Rosen and colleagues at Memorial Sloan Kettering report the first use of an HSP90 inhibitor called 17-AAG. The clinical study shows that the best results were obtained by using 17-AAG intermittently and also examined the toxicity of the drug. Based on the success of this research, the next step will be phase II clinical trials to test the results when 17-AAG or a more advanced inhibitor is used in a wider variety of tumors.
David B. Solit, S. Percy Ivy, Catherine Kopil, Rachel Sikorski, Michael J. Morris, Susan F. Slovin, W. Kevin Kelly, Anthony DeLaCruz, Tracy Curley, Glenn Heller, Steven Larson, Lawrence Schwartz, Merrill J. Egorin, Neal Rosen and Howard I. Scher. “Phase I Trial of 17-Allylamino-17-Demethoxygeldanamycin in Patients with Advanced Cancer.” Clinical Cancer Research 13, 1775-1782, March 15, 2007. doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-06-1863 http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/13/6/1775 |
| Collaborating for a Cure through the SWCRF Institute Without Walls
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