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Hitting the bull's eye: Novel directed cancer therapy through helicase‐targeted synthetic lethality
Author(s) -
Aggarwal Monika,
Brosh Robert M.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of cellular biochemistry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.028
H-Index - 165
eISSN - 1097-4644
pISSN - 0730-2312
DOI - 10.1002/jcb.22048
Subject(s) - helicase , synthetic lethality , dna repair , cancer , dna damage , biology , dna , cancer research , cancer cell , dna damage repair , computational biology , genetics , gene , rna
Designing strategies for anti‐cancer therapy have posed a significant challenge. One approach has been to inhibit specific DNA repair proteins and their respective pathways to enhance chemotherapy and radiation therapy used to treat cancer patients. Synthetic lethality represents an approach that exploits pre‐existing DNA repair deficiencies in certain tumors to develop inhibitors of DNA repair pathways that compensate for the tumor‐associated repair deficiency. Since helicases play critical roles in the DNA damage response and DNA repair, particularly in actively dividing and replicating cells, it is proposed that the identification and characterization of synthetic lethal relationships of DNA helicases will be of value in developing improved anti‐cancer treatment strategies. In this review, we discuss this hypothesis and current evidence for synthetic lethal interactions of eukaryotic DNA helicases in model systems. J. Cell. Biochem. 106: 758–763, 2009. Published 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.