Friday, 16 February 2007

New inhibitor molecule for cancer cells

Source:- Science Daily

Scientists have found out an inhibitor for a protein involved in cell division. They found the results when they tested the inhibitor in mice and tumour cell cultures.

Kinases are enzymes playing a crucial role in the cell division of normal cells. It also plays the same role in cancerous cells even though a cancer cells has a lot of modifications in its pathways as compared to a normal cell.

Scientists claim that the cell division part is handled by a set of kinases and that if they can target these, then they can arrest cell division and cease the development of cancer.

They considered a particular kinase by the name Plk1. They isolated a new molecule called BI 2536 which they found to be a potent inhibitor of Plk1. They tried the inhibitor on cancer cells grown in cell culture and also on human tumour grafts in mice and they found that BI 2536 effectively arrested the cancer cell division and therefore leading to their apoptosis.

Some of the scientists used this inhibitor on normal cells to block the function of Plk 1 inorder to learn its functions.

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