Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: EC:3.4.22.62 (caspase-9)
 7,507 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

With an increasing cancer rate worldwide, there is an urgent quest for the improvement of anticancer drugs. One of the main problems of present chemotherapy in treatment of tumor patients is the toxicity of drugs. Most of the existent anticancer drugs, unfortunately, attack also proliferating normal cells. In recent years, traditional Chinese herbal remedies have gradually gained considerable attention as a new source of anticancer drugs. Although their healing mechanisms are still largely unknown, some of the drugs have been used to help cancer patients fight their disease at reduced side effects compared to other treatments. In our study, we show that Rocaglamide (Roc), derived from the traditional Chinese medicinal plants Aglaia, induces apoptosis through the intrinsic death pathway in various human leukemia cell lines and in acute lymphoblastic leukemia, chronic myeloid leukemia and acute myeloid leukemia cells freshly isolated from patients. Investigation of the molecular mechanisms by which Roc kills tumors revealed that it induces a consistent activation of the stress-response mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) p38 accompanied with a long-term suppression of the survival MAPK extracellular signal-regulated kinase. These events affect proapoptotic Bcl-2 family proteins leading to depolarization of the mitochondrial membrane potential and trigger caspase-mediated apoptosis involving caspase-9, -8, -3 and -2. Importantly, Roc shows no effects on MAPKs in normal lymphocytes and therefore has no or very low toxicity on healthy cells. Up to now, more than 50 different Roc derivatives have been isolated from Aglaia. Our study suggests that Roc derivatives may be promising candidates for the development of new drugs against hematologic malignancies.
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PMID:The traditional Chinese herbal compound rocaglamide preferentially induces apoptosis in leukemia cells by modulation of mitogen-activated protein kinase activities. 1756 40

LMB-100 (RG7787) is a recombinant immunotoxin, which kills mesothelin-expressing cancer cells and now being evaluated in phase 1 trials. To enhance the anti-tumor activity of LMB-100, we have searched for agents, already approved for cancer therapy, that can be combined with LMB-100 to increase its efficacy. Panbinostat is a pan-histone deacetylase inhibitor that is used to treat multiple myeloma. We incubated different types of cancer cells with panbinostat and LMB-100 and found that they interacted synergistically to cause cell death. We found that panbinostat and the combination increased levels of mRNAs encoding TNF/TNFR family members, as well as BNIP3L and CASP-9, and markedly decreased mRNA levels for c-FLIP and BID. Western blots confirmed a fall in levels of cFLIP protein and a rise in BNIP3L and caspase-9. The combination also increased levels of cleaved BID (t-BID), cleaved-capsase-3 and -8 and PARP. To assess the importance of the fall in cFLIP levels, we treated cells with the cFLIP inhibitor, Rocaglamide, and found it also enhanced killing of tumor cells by LMB-100. LMB-100, which activates the intrinsic pathway of apoptosis, and panbinostat, which activates the extrinsic pathway, work in a synergistic manner to kill cancer cell lines.
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PMID:Panbinostat decreases cFLIP and enhances killing of cancer cells by immunotoxin LMB-100 by stimulating the extrinsic apoptotic pathway. 2915 82