Source: Dana Farber Website
Prototype drug blocks MCL-1 protein that helps tumors survive treatment
Loren Walensky, MD, PhDScientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have found a way to disable a common protein that often thwarts chemotherapy treatment of several major forms of cancer.
The researchers discovered, surprisingly, that they could exploit a small portion of this anti-death protein, called MCL-1, to make a molecular tool that specifically blocked MCL-1′s “pro-survival” action, allowing standard cancer drugs to kill the tumor cells by apoptosis, or programmed cell death. More
