Word: proteins
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Many of the new therapies also happen to be incredibly potent. Last month, for example, pharmaceutical giant Novartis reported spectacular results in a clinical trial of Glivec, a drug that disables a uniquely aberrant protein produced inside cells of chronic myelogenous leukemia, which afflicts 4,400 new patients in the US each year. In the drug’s very first test, every patient went into remission. In the most recent results, 30 percent showed no chromosomal sign of disease and appeared to have been cured. "This drug is amazing," says Richard Stone, an oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute...
Glivec is just one of several new therapies that work by cutting a cancer cell’s lines of communication, either preventing it from reproducing or forcing it to self-destruct. Other signal-jamming treatments use monoclonal antibodies, tiny proteins that resemble the human immune system’s own antibodies but which bind to the surface of cancer cells. New York-based ImClone Systems has an antibody called IMC-C225, now in the final phases of testing in colorectal and head and neck cancer, that acts like bubble gum stuffed in a keyhole. It prevents a specialized protein known...
Other companies are focused on boosting the immune system with vaccines that can direct it to target cancer cells. A vaccine developed at Memorial Sloan-Kettering binds a protein from a limpet to seven different types of sugars and a protein fragment found only on cancer cells, and saponin, a soap-like derivative from a South American tree. This witch’s brew serves to annoy the immune system, revving it up enough to attack cancer cells that are carrying the same sugars and protein fragment...
These fuzzy snapshots, however, aren’t always enough. When they are active, protein molecules may double over or twist into radically different shapes. Understanding their dynamics can be crucial to drug design, and for this good computer simulations are invaluable. San Diego-based Structural Bioinformatics, for example, generates digital "movies" of how proteins writhe and twist when activated or ensnared by drugs, and identifies the small molecules that would best disable these moving targets...
...first place to look for causes and treatments of Parkinson’s disease is in the brains of patients themselves. As the illness worsens, brain tissue becomes clogged with a protein muck that includes a substance called alpha-synuclein. No one knows exactly what alpha-synuclein does, but it’s believed to play a role in the smooth transmission of nerve signals. When the substance clumps, it can’t do the work it was designed to do, leading to neuron damage, loss of the neurotransmitter dopamine, and eventually to the familiar shakiness of such well-known Parkinson...