Unconventional hunt for new cancer targets leads to a powerful drug candidate for leukemia
Wednesday, August 3, 2011 - 12:30
in Health & Medicine
Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and five other institutions have used an unconventional approach to cancer drug discovery to identify a new potential treatment for acute myeloid leukemia (AML). As reported in Nature online on August 3, the scientists have pinpointed a protein called Brd4 as a novel drug target for AML, an aggressive blood cancer that is currently incurable in 70% of patients. Using a drug compound that inhibits the activity of Brd4, the scientists were able to suppress the disease in experimental models.