Novel molecular targets in cancer chemotherapy waiting for discovery

Abstract

Despite a number of advances in the past decades the medicinal cancer therapy is hampered by problems of severe unwanted side effects and the development of resistances. Many established anti-cancer drugs are directed toward targets that are not specific for cancer but are essential biochemical molecules in living cells. Because cancer cells do not only carry one but multiple genetic alterations which are more characteristic for the individual patient than for the tumor entity, an individualized medicinal approach could improve the success of a tumor therapy. A prerequisite for personalized tumor therapies is an upgrade of the array of anticancer drugs directed to different molecular targets. Therefore, a systematic search for anticancer drug targets should constitute a research priority. The database of fingerprints of new chemical entities generated in the National Cancer Institute's Anticancer Drug Screening is a rich source of novel targets which might be uncovered by the interdisciplinary application of methods from bioinformatics, biochemistry, chemistry, tumor biology and related sciences.