Early diagnosis and improved treatments have reduced the mortality and morbidity of many cancers. However, a major obstacle to achieving more effective cancer treatment or even a cure, is the ability of cancer cells to develop multi-drug resistance to cancer drugs in a wholesale fashion.

The new “weapons” to defeat cancer drug resistance, as described by Dr. Gottesman et al. starting from page 18, are 3P’s and 3E’s - Predictive, Personalized, and Preemptive, and Engage, Exploit, and Evade, respectively.

Among them, personalization stands out. The primary culprit behind the multi-drug resistance is P-glycoprotein (Pgp), a transmembrane protein encoded by the MDR1 gene ... Read more

Abstract: Infections acquired in the hospital during visits and hospitalization have happened to 2 million patients and cause 90,000 deaths in the U.S a year -- a staggering number beyond comprehension or common sense. Due to the mobility and persistence of drug-resistant bacterial infections, one hospital's infection control effort, balancing both cost and benefit to that hospital, may not make a significant impact in a large population base, but it would if all hospitals act together. ... Read more

Abstract: Most current drug treatments cannot cure cancer. Recent studies have demonstrated that one of the reasons is that chemoagents kill the rapidly growing cells, including cancer cells, but do little damage to non-dividing cells. Cancerous stem cells stay quiescent and escape from these chemoagents to mount a comeback at a later time. ... Read more

Introduction

The natural product pool, which includes many glycosylated secondary metabolites, is the source of over half of the world’s drug leads. For example, the antibiotics vancomycin and erythromycin, the antitumor compounds bleomycin and doxorubicin, and the antifungal agents amphotericin and nystatin all contain essential sugar attachments. Carbohydrate groups of natural product-based drugs have long been known to generally influence pharmacokinetic properties and there is an increasing recognition that these carbohydrate appendages also play a key role in drug-target interactions. These findings suggest that the alteration of glycosylation patterns on secondary metabolites is a potential strategy for the generation of novel ... Read more

One of the major therapeutic challenges that face modern clinicians is the development of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Currently, antibiotic resistance is a major problem in the treatment of staphylococcal, enterococcal, pneumocystis, helicobacter, and mycobacterial infections, to name a few. While there are several different mechanisms by which this occurs, the common pathway in the development of bacterial resistance has been the widespread use of broad-spectrum antibiotics as single agents.

In the work summarized here, we devised a novel antibiotic, which could be used to overcome bacterial resistance to standard antibiotics. The concept is based on two principles. 1) Use of ... Read more

Dr. Bert Vogelstein is the Clayton Professor of Oncology and Pathology at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He graduated summa cum laude with distinction in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1970 and earned an M.D. from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1974. He became a professor of oncology at Hopkins in 1989. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Vogelstein is the number one most cited scientist over a 20-year period from 1983 to ... Read more

Scientists and clinicians have been waging a war against HIV — the human immunodeficiency virus that infects and destroys immune cells and causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Globally orchestrated, well-funded research and development initiatives have produced an impressive array of armaments — 32 anti-HIV drugs have been approved by the FDA as of January 2008. These drugs are classified into 7 categories based on their hitting targets. Unique combinations of these drugs (usually 2 to 5) have delivered powerful punches to HIV and, in many patients, have reduced the viral load to a level that a functional immune system is ... Read more

Early diagnosis and improved treatments have reduced the mortality and morbidity of many cancers. However, a major obstacle to achieving more effective cancer treatment is the ability of cancer cells to develop multidrug resistance to cancer drugs in a wholesale fashion. Many chemoagents worked before they don’t.

Among the new “weapons” to defeat cancer drug resistance, personalization stands out. The primary culprit behind multidrug resistance is P-glycoprotein, a transmembrane transporter protein encoded by the MDR1 gene (or ABCD1) that pumps cancer drugs out of cells thus diminishing their effectiveness. Out of the approximately 50 transporter proteins that export molecules out of ... Read more