scholarly journals Signalling networks in cholangiocarcinoma: Molecular pathogenesis, targeted therapies and drug resistance

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (S1) ◽  
pp. 43-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Fouassier ◽  
Marco Marzioni ◽  
Marta B. Afonso ◽  
Steven Dooley ◽  
Kevin Gaston ◽  
...  
Cancers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 1292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirin Hafezi ◽  
Mohamed Rahmani

The major form of cell death in normal as well as malignant cells is apoptosis, which is a programmed process highly regulated by the BCL-2 family of proteins. This includes the antiapoptotic proteins (BCL-2, BCL-XL, MCL-1, BCLW, and BFL-1) and the proapoptotic proteins, which can be divided into two groups: the effectors (BAX, BAK, and BOK) and the BH3-only proteins (BIM, BAD, NOXA, PUMA, BID, BIK, HRK). Notably, the BCL-2 antiapoptotic proteins are often overexpressed in malignant cells. While this offers survival advantages to malignant cells and strengthens their drug resistance capacity, it also offers opportunities for novel targeted therapies that selectively kill such cells. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the extensive preclinical and clinical studies targeting BCL-2 proteins with various BCL-2 proteins inhibitors with emphasis on venetoclax as a single agent, as well as in combination with other therapeutic agents. This review also discusses recent advances, challenges focusing on drug resistance, and future perspectives for effective targeting the Bcl-2 family of proteins in cancer.


2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 141-150
Author(s):  
Dmitry Andreev ◽  
◽  
Igor Maev ◽  
Yuriy Kucheryavyy ◽  
Diana Dicheva

Sarcoma ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew L. Broadhead ◽  
Jonathan C. M. Clark ◽  
Damian E. Myers ◽  
Crispin R. Dass ◽  
Peter F. M. Choong

Osteosarcoma is the most common primary malignancy of bone. It arises in bone during periods of rapid growth and primarily affects adolescents and young adults. The 5-year survival rate for osteosarcoma is 60%–70%, with no significant improvements in prognosis since the advent of multiagent chemotherapy. Diagnosis, staging, and surgical management of osteosarcoma remain focused on our anatomical understanding of the disease. As our knowledge of the molecular pathogenesis of osteosarcoma expands, potential therapeutic targets are being identified. A comprehensive understanding of these mechanisms is essential if we are to improve the prognosis of patients with osteosarcoma through tumour-targeted therapies. This paper will outline the pathogenic mechanisms of osteosarcoma oncogenesis and progression and will discuss some of the more frontline translational studies performed to date in search of novel, safer, and more targeted drugs for disease management.


Author(s):  
Nadia Bouhamdani ◽  
Dominique Comeau ◽  
Sandra Turcotte

For a long time, lysosomes were considered as mere waste bags for cellular constituents. Thankfully, studies carried out in the past 15 years were brimming with elegant and crucial breakthroughs in lysosome research, uncovering their complex roles as nutrient sensors and characterizing them as crucial multifaceted signaling organelles. This review presents the scientific knowledge on lysosome physiology and functions, starting with their discovery and reviewing up to date ground-breaking discoveries highlighting their heterogeneous functions as well as pending questions that remain to be answered. We also review the roles of lysosomes in anti-cancer drug resistance and how they undergo a series of molecular and functional changes during malignant transformation which lead to tumor aggression, angiogenesis, and metastases. Finally, we discuss the strategy of targeting lysosomes in cancer which could lead to the development of new and effective targeted therapies.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noemi Picco ◽  
Erik Sahai ◽  
Philip K. Maini ◽  
Alexander R. A. Anderson

AbstractDrug resistance is the single most important driver of cancer treatment failure for modern targeted therapies. This resistance may be due to the presence of dormant or aggressive tumor cell phenotypes or to context-driven protection. Non-malignant cells and other factors, constituting the microenvironment in which the tumor grows (the stroma), are now thought to play a crucial role in both therapeutic response and resistance. Specifically, the dialogue between the tumor and stroma has been shown to modulate the response to molecularly targeted therapies, through proliferative and survival signaling. The goal of this work is to investigate interactions between a growing tumor and its surrounding stroma in facilitating the emergence of drug resistance. We use mathematical modeling as a theoretical framework to bridge between experimental models and scales, with the aim of separating the intrinsic and extrinsic components of resistance in BRAF mutated melanoma. The model describes tumor-stroma dynamics both with and without treatment. Calibration of our model, through the integration of experimental data, revealed significant variation across animal replicates in either the intensity of stromal promotion or intrinsic tissue carrying capacity. Furthermore our study highlights the need to account for this variation in the design of treatment strategies. Major Findings. Through the integration of a simple mathematical model with in vitro and in vivo experimental growth dynamics of melanoma cell lines (both with and without drug), we were able to dissect the relative contributions of intrinsic versus environmental resistance. Our study revealed significant heterogeneity in vivo, indicating that there is a diversity of either stromal promotion or tumor carrying capacity under targeted therapy. We believe this variation may be one possible explanation for the heterogeneity observed across patients and within individual patients with multiple metastases. Therefore, quantifying this variation both within in vivo model systems and in individual patients could have a significant impact on the design of future treatment strategies that target both the tumor and stroma. Further, we present guidelines for building more effective and longer lasting therapeutic strategies utilizing our experimentally calibrated model. These strategies explicitly consider the protective nature of the stroma and utilize inhibitors that modulate it.PrecisQuantification of the environmental contribution to drug resistance reveals heterogeneity that significantly alters treatment dynamics that can be exploited for therapeutic gain.Financial SupportPicco and Anderson: US National Cancer Institute grant U01CA151924.Picco: UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC grant number EP/G037280/1).Conflict of Interest DisclosureThe authors declare no potential conflicts of interest.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hideko Isozaki ◽  
Ammal Abbasi ◽  
Naveed Nikpour ◽  
Adam Langenbucher ◽  
Wenjia Su ◽  
...  

AbstractAcquired drug resistance to even the most effective anti-cancer targeted therapies remains an unsolved clinical problem. Although many drivers of acquired drug resistance have been identified1‒6, the underlying molecular mechanisms shaping tumor evolution during treatment are incompletely understood. The extent to which therapy actively drives tumor evolution by promoting mutagenic processes7 or simply provides the selective pressure necessary for the outgrowth of drug-resistant clones8 remains an open question. Here, we report that lung cancer targeted therapies commonly used in the clinic induce the expression of cytidine deaminase APOBEC3A (A3A), leading to sustained mutagenesis in drug-tolerant cancer cells persisting during therapy. Induction of A3A facilitated the formation of double-strand DNA breaks (DSBs) in cycling drug-treated cells, and fully resistant clones that evolved from drug-tolerant intermediates exhibited an elevated burden of chromosomal aberrations such as copy number alterations and structural variations. Preventing therapy-induced A3A mutagenesis either by gene deletion or RNAi-mediated suppression delayed the emergence of drug resistance. Finally, we observed accumulation of A3A mutations in lung cancer patients who developed drug resistance after treatment with sequential targeted therapies. These data suggest that induction of A3A mutagenesis in response to targeted therapy treatment may facilitate the development of acquired resistance in non-small-cell lung cancer. Thus, suppressing expression or enzymatic activity of A3A may represent a potential therapeutic strategy to prevent or delay acquired resistance to lung cancer targeted therapy.


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