Slashdot Mirror
New Chemical Tools Lead To Targeted Cancer Drugs
New submitter caudex writes: Proteins are encoded in DNA, and while the degeneracy of the genetic code works to minimize errors, a single DNA basepair mutation can change the structure of the encoded protein. When a mutated protein causes uncontrolled cell growth, we call it cancer. Unfortunately, proteins typically contain hundreds of amino acids, and developing a drug that will target the version of a protein containing one amino acid mutation is difficult. For this reason, most anticancer agents indiscriminately attack both mutant and healthy proteins and tissues. Researchers at Caltech have come up with a potentially general method for selectively drugging only the mutant protein at fault for cancerous activity, even in the crowded and complex milieu of living cells. Their proof of concept study published in Nature Chemistry targets the E17K mutation, which can be the causative mutation of many types of cancer.
Oh shut up.
First of all, if you even bothered to wake up in the morning you would see that chemo treatments, even 'cures' are very, very profitable. The MBAs running the pharmaceutical companies are way smarter than you are.
Next, it is a potential treatment, nothing of a cure so even Big Evil Pharma will be joyously happy.
Third, it's just a proof-of-potential, not even a proof of concept. Dealing with the protein effects of a single point mutation, AFIR, hasn't been shown to treat any clinical cancers. In fact, this seems to be a better fit for creating an antiviral or antibiotic than a specific cancer treatment.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
This remains complete horseshit. There's no conspiracy to keep cancer cures from the public. As a cancer survivor I'm weary of this constant bullshit being spread around by idiots.
Not sure why this kind of cute 'inside baseball' research is being posted on Slashdot. Firstly there are many and better ways of screening for peptides -- the click chemistry trick is probably applicable only for this this proof of concept (toy) system. Good luck with a real protein. Secondly peptides are useful for research and totally useless as drugs. Thirdly the summary is really wrong here, the minimal in vivo data shown here does not come close to addressing the "complex milieu" of cells much less cancer much less Akt mutation driven cancer
So which member of the Cal Tech research team posted this slashvertisement? Congratulations on your Nature Chemistry paper. By they way it has gone to your head.