The development of hybrid compounds has been widely considered as a promising strategy to circumvent the difficulties that emerge in cancer treatment. The well-established strategy of adding acetyl groups to certain drugs has been demonstrated to enhance their therapeutic efficacy. Based on our previous work, an approach of accommodating two chemical entities into a single structure was implemented to synthesize new acetylated hybrids ( and ) from 5-aminosalicylic acid and 4-thiazolinone derivatives.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Altered epigenetic map is frequently observed in cancer and recent investigations have demonstrated a pertinent role of epigenetic modifications in the response to many anticancer drugs including the DNA damaging agents. Topoisomerase I (Top I) is a well-known nuclear enzyme that is critical for DNA function and cell survival and its inhibition causes DNA strand breaks and cell cycle arrest. Inhibitors of human Top I have proven to be a prosperous chemotherapeutic treatment for a vast number of cancer patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLung and colorectal cancers are among the leading causes of death from cancer worldwide. Although topotecan (TPT), a topoisomerase1 inhibitor, is a first- and second-line drug for lung and colon cancers, the development of drug resistance and toxicity still remain as a major obstacle to chemotherapeutic success. Accumulating evidence indicates increased efficacy and reduced toxicity of chemotherapeutic agents upon combining them with natural products.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThroughout the process of carcinogenesis, cancer cells develop intricate networks to adapt to a variety of stressful conditions including DNA damage, nutrient deprivation, and hypoxia. These molecular networks encounter genomic instability and mutations coupled with changes in the gene expression programs due to genetic and epigenetic alterations. Histone deacetylases (HDACs) are important modulators of the epigenetic constitution of cancer cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused and is still causing significant mortality and economic consequences all over the globe. As of today, there are three U.S Food and Drug administration (FDA) approved vaccines, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Janssen COVID-19 vaccine.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSelective inhibition of histone deacetylases (HDACs) is an important strategy in the field of anticancer drug discovery. However, lack of inhibitors that possess high selectivity toward certain HDACs isozymes is associated with adverse side effects that limits their clinical applications. We have initiated a collaborative initiatives between multi-institutions aimed at the discovery of novel and selective HDACs inhibitors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFModulation of several targets in cancer cells enhances the effect of anti-cancer drugs. This can be achieved by using combinations of anti-cancer drugs or by designing new drugs with novel pharmacophore structures that target different molecules within cancer cells. We developed a panel of such compounds by accommodating two chemical entities (5-Aminoslicylic acid and thiazolin-4-one) known to have anti-cancer activities into a single framework structure.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTriple negative breast cancer (TNBC) cells are resistant to hormonal/targeted therapies. This study aims to investigate epigenetic differences between TNBC and other types of breast cancer and the effect of epigenetic modulation on the response of TNBC cells to hormonal therapy. Thus, we investigated (i) the expression of different epigenetic markers, (ii) the effect of epigenetic modifying agents on the expression of ERα and HER2/ERBB2 and (iii) the effect on the response to tamoxifen in four breast cancer cell lines with different hormonal receptor status.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFKinases and phosphatases are important players in growth signaling and are involved in cancer development. For development of targeted cancer therapy, attention is given to kinases rather than phosphatases inhibitors. Src homology region 2 domain-containing protein tyrosine phosphatase2 (SHP2) is overexpressed in different types of cancers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExosomes released from cancer cells support metastasis and growth of recipient cells and increase their resistance to chemotherapy. Therapeutic targeting of exosomes is a promising area in cancer research. Our aim is to test the effect of the mast cell stabilizer ketotifen on exosomes release from cancer cells and how this can modify their response to doxorubicin.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOver the years chemotherapy failure has been a vital research topic as researchers have been striving to discover reasons behind it. The extensive studies carried out on chemotherapeutic agents confirm that resistance to chemotherapy is a major reason for treatment failure. "Resistance to chemotherapy," however, is a comprehensive phrase that refers to a variety of different mechanisms in which ATP-binding cassette (ABC) mediated efflux dominates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDNA-dependent protein kinase (DNA-PK) is a key enzyme in non-homologous DNA end joining (NHEJ) repair pathway. The targeted inhibition of such enzyme would furnish a valuable option for cancer treatment. In this study we report the development of validation of enzyme homology model, and the subsequent use of this model to perform docking-based virtual screening against a database of FDA-approved drugs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite the high efficiency of ionizing radiation (IR) to inactivate malignant tumours in general, an appreciable number of individual patients cannot be cured by standard IR. Head and neck tumours are not likely to be cured even by high-dose radiotherapy or chemotherapy. Accordingly, combined therapy is one of the most applicable strategies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLung cancer cells show inherent and acquired resistance to chemotherapy. The lack of good predictive markers/novel targets and the incomplete understanding of the mechanisms of resistance limit the success of lung cancer response to chemotherapy. In the present study, we used an isogenic pair of lung adenocarcinoma cell lines; A549 (wild-type) and A549DOX11 (doxorubicin resistant) to study the role of epigenetics and miRNA in resistance/response of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells to doxorubicin.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study was designed to evaluate some parameters that may play a role in the prediction of cancer cells sensitivity to cisplatin (CIS). Sensitivity, induction and repair of DNA double-strand breaks (DSB), cell cycle regulation and induction of apoptosis were measured in four cancer cell lines with different sensitivities to CIS. Using a sulphorhodamine-B assay, the cervical carcinoma cells (HeLa) were found to be the most sensitive to CIS followed by breast carcinoma cells (MCF-7) and liver carcinoma cells (HepG2).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: The use of combinations of chemotherapy and natural products has recently emerged as a new method of cancer therapy, relying on the capacity of certain natural compounds to trigger cell death with low doses of chemotherapeutic agents and few side effects. The current study aims to evaluate the modulatory effects of curcumin (CUR), Nigella sativa (NS) and taurine on etoposide (ETP) cytotoxicity in a panel of cancer cell lines and to identify their underlying mechanisms. CUR alone showed potent antitumor activity, but surprisingly, its interaction with ETP was antagonistic in four out of five cancer cell lines.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCelecoxib, an inhibitor of cyclooxygenase-2, is being investigated for enhancement of chemotherapy efficacy in cancer clinical trials. This study investigates the ability of cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitors to sensitize cells from different origins to several chemotherapeutic agents. The effect of the drug's mechanism of action and sequence of administration are also investigated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInhibition of the repair of 5-fluorouracil (FU)-induced DNA lesions may improve the response of many tumors to this anticancer agent. Despite the identified associations between DNA strand breaks and the lethality of thymidylate synthase inhibitors, the role of DNA double-strand break (DSB) repair pathways in a cellular response to 5-FU treatment has not been studied yet. Isogenic cell lines defective (irs1SF), wild type (AA8), or reconstituted (1SFK8) in the DSB repair protein XRCC3 were used to investigate the effect of defective DSB repair on the overall sensitivity of cells to 5-FU and to see how targeting DSB repair may affect other cellular responses to 5-FU.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study was designed to investigate the molecular changes that may develop during exposure of breast cancer cells to anticancer agents and that may lead to acquired resistance. We used two breast cancer cell lines, a parental (MCF7/WT) and a doxorubicin-resistant (MCF7/DOX) one. Cell survival, cell cycle distribution and RT-PCR expression level of genes involved in DNA damage response, MDR1, GST and TOPOIIalpha were measured.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To compare the efficiency of apoptosis and other modes of cell death in killing tumor cells after the induction of DNA damage by topoisomerase inhibitors like etoposide.
Methods: This study was carried out in the Tumor Biology Department, National Cancer Institute, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt, from September 2005 to August 2007. The breast cancer MCF7, the cervix carcinoma, human cervical adenocarcinoma Hela, and the brain tumor U251 cell lines were exposed to etoposide.
J Egypt Natl Canc Inst
June 2005
Purpose: The aim of the present study is to investigate whether differences between tumor cells in radiosensitivity are related to misrejoined- or residual DNA-double strand breaks.
Material And Methods: An assay that allows measurement of absolute induction frequencies for DNA double strand breaks (DSBs) in defined regions in the genome, and that quantitates rejoining of correct DNA ends has been used to study repair of DSBs in three human tumor cell lines. DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) were measured within a 3.
Background: In Egypt, breast cancer ranks number one among the female malignancies. Activation of oncogenes and inactivation of tumor suppressor genes are thought to play an important role in the development and progression of breast cancer.
Purpose: The present study is a trial to investigate the role of chromosome 17 in sporadic invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast through detection of LOH for 6 highly polymorphic microsatellite loci, two of which are located at BRCA1 gene (D17S855 and D17S856), one at TP53 gene, one at nm-23 gene and finally two at 17q12-12.