HSP90 inhibitors disrupt a transient HSP90-HSF1 interaction and identify a noncanonical model of HSP90-mediated HSF1 regulation.

Heat shock factor 1 (HSF1) initiates a broad transcriptional response to proteotoxic stress while also mediating a cancer-specific transcriptional program. HSF1 is thought to be regulated by molecular chaperones, including Heat Shock Protein 90 (HSP90). HSP90 is proposed to sequester HSF1 in unstressed cells, but visualization of this interaction in vivo requires protein crosslinking.

Client Proteins and Small Molecule Inhibitors Display Distinct Binding Preferences for Constitutive and Stress-Induced HSP90 Isoforms and Their Conformationally Restricted Mutants.

The two cytosolic/nuclear isoforms of the molecular chaperone HSP90, stress-inducible HSP90α and constitutively expressed HSP90β, fold, assemble and maintain the three-dimensional structure of numerous client proteins. Because many HSP90 clients are important in cancer, several HSP90 inhibitors have been evaluated in the clinic. However, little is known concerning possible unique isoform or conformational preferences of either individual HSP90 clients or inhibitors.

Combined HSP90 and kinase inhibitor therapy: Insights from The Cancer Genome Atlas.

The merging of knowledge from genomics, cellular signal transduction and molecular evolution is producing new paradigms of cancer analysis. Protein kinases have long been understood to initiate and promote malignant cell growth and targeting kinases to fight cancer has been a major strategy within the pharmaceutical industry for over two decades. Despite the initial success of kinase inhibitors (KIs), the ability of cancer to evolve resistance and reprogram oncogenic signaling networks has reduced the efficacy of kinase targeting.