Molecular targeted therapy: A strategy of disillusions or optimism?

PET for Therapeutic Response Monitoring in Oncology

After diagnosis and staging of cancer, the most important process in modern oncology is assessment of therapeutic response. Timely identification of patients with poor response may allow introduction of alternative therapies, sparing patients the toxicity of ineffective treatments, reducing health care cost, and potentially delivering better outcomes. Metabolic imaging using PET is increasingly recognized as providing earlier and more robust assessment than conventional imaging. There are now ample clinical data indicating that PET metabolic response should be strongly considered for inclusion in evaluation of clinical response in individual high-risk malignancies to both direct the care of individual patients and to guide application of new therapies in particular cancer populations.

Original triazine inductor of new specific molecular targets, with antitumor activity against nonsmall cell lung cancer

Despite our growing insight into carcinogenesis, treatment of tumors, especially nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC), remains limited and it is urgent to develop strategies that target tumor cells and their genetic features. Drug discovery efforts have historically focused on the search for compounds that modulate the protein products of genes. Current drug therapy targets only a few hundred endogenous targets, mainly proteins, such as receptors and enzymes. But now, the interest in specifically targeting RNA is increasing, both for target validation and/or therapeutic purposes. In this regard, our work was concerned with the induction of new molecular targets correlated to a cytostatic effect on NSCLC cell line, after treatment with a new triazin named A190. The in vitro study of cell cycle and apoptosis induction demonstrated the antiproliferative potential of this new compounds, and the use of quantitative RT-PCR analysis permit to display an original mechanism of action involving 2 genes: HEF1 and B2. The antitumor effect was also confirmed by the good results in vivo on nude mice xenografts.