[Seminar Series] Bioinformatics and Targeted therapy for cancers by Dr. Junseong Park

Описание: Traditional cytotoxic drugs target rapidly dividing cells primarily via inhibition of cell division. For example, alkylating agents disrupt DNA base pairing, and taxane inhibits normal microtubule function. But the therapeutic efficiency of cytotoxic drugs is limited by broad toxicity to proliferating normal cells. They show low therapeutic index and narrow therapeutic window. Also, most cytotoxic anticancer drugs have to be used near their maximum tolerable doses to achieve meaningful therapeutic effects. And there are some side effects because drugs cannot target tumor cells only. That's why targeted chemotherapy came up. Targeted therapy shows higher specificity against tumor cells. It targets growth factors, signaling molecules, cell cycle proteins or regulator of angiogenesis. There are two main types of targeted therapeutics. Monoclonal antibodies are specific for extracellular target, and show modest toxicity. Small molecule inhibitors show broader specificity for intracellular targets since they can enter readily into the cells.