| One of the biggest obstacles in the development of cancer therapeutics is the sheer complexity of the problem. Cancer may result from a large number of genetic and molecular defects, or combination of these defects, giving rise to loss of cell cycle checkpoints and unregulated cell division. Even individual tumours may exhibit heterogeneous phenotypes at the cellular level. The inherent genetic instability of cancer cells may also add to the problem, enabling them to continue to change during treatment and effectively presenting a moving target.The majority of anti-cancer therapeutics currently in use were discovered due to their ability to kill fast-growing cancer cells. Unfortunately, these often cause severe side effects due to their impact on other fast-growing cells in the body. There is, therefore, a need to design drugs that target a specific pathogenic pathway and to base the design of the drug upon the structure of its protein target.
|
