Identification of potential therapeutic molecular targets preferentially expressed by esophageal cancer cells

Abstract

Targeting specific molecules and their associated molecular pathways in cancers is becoming an attractive treatment modality with remarkable success in some forms of human cancer. We review a recent study by Maurer and colleagues which examined the level of expression of five different proteins in esophageal cancers and compared this to adjacent normal tissues and whether neoadjuvant chemotherapy has any effect on their level of expression. Among the five proteins investigated, TIMP-4 was suggested as the most promising target as it is not significantly expressed by adjacent normal tissues and its high expression levels persist after neoadjuvant chemotherapy.