Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2017 Mar 21;24(1):21.
doi: 10.1186/s12929-017-0328-x.

Evaluation of the use of therapeutic peptides for cancer treatment

Susan Marqus  1 , Elena Pirogova  1 , Terrence J Piva  2
Affiliations
Review

Evaluation of the use of therapeutic peptides for cancer treatment

Susan Marqus et al. J Biomed Sci. .

Abstract

Cancer along with cardiovascular disease are the main causes of death in the industrialised countries around the World. Conventional cancer treatments are losing their therapeutic uses due to drug resistance, lack of tumour selectivity and solubility and as such there is a need to develop new therapeutic agents. Therapeutic peptides are a promising and a novel approach to treat many diseases including cancer. They have several advantages over proteins or antibodies: as they are (a) easy to synthesise, (b) have a high target specificity and selectivity and (c) have low toxicity. Therapeutic peptides do have some significant drawbacks related to their stability and short half-life. In this review, strategies used to overcome peptide limitations and to enhance their therapeutic effect will be compared. The use of short cell permeable peptides that interfere and inhibit protein-protein interactions will also be evaluated.

Keywords: Apoptosis; Cancer; Cell penetrating peptides; Therapeutic peptides.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
MAPK signalling pathways (Adopted from [100])
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Cell cycle in eukaryotic (adopted from [147])
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Structure represents features of Bcl-2 family proteins including anti-apoptotic and pro-apoptotic (adopted from [181])
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Global Burden of Disease Cancer, C The Global Burden of Cancer 2013. JAMA Oncology. 2015;1(4):505–527. doi: 10.1001/jamaoncol.2015.0735. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Torre LA, et al. Global cancer statistics, 2012. CA Cancer J Clin. 2015;65(2):87–108. doi: 10.3322/caac.21262. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bray F, Moller B. Predicting the future burden of cancer. Nat Rev Cancer. 2006;6(1):63–74. doi: 10.1038/nrc1781. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Vogelstein B, et al. Cancer genome landscapes. Science. 2013;339(6127):1546–58. doi: 10.1126/science.1235122. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kurreck J, Stein CA. Molecular Medicine: An Introduction. 1. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2016.

MeSH terms