BREAST CANCER RESEARCH RIGHT NOW! 6: Something To Block Breast Cancer Cells From Growing! Cyclin Dependent Kinase Inhibitors (Now Ain't THAT A Mouthful!)

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

Every month, I’ll be highlighting breast cancer research that is going on RIGHT NOW! Harvested from different websites, journals and podcasts, I’ll translate them into understandable English and share them with you. Today: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-10/pfizer-may-push-5-billion-breast-cancer-hope-for-ruling.html

Yeah, I know, the lead article is from the financial page and talks about how the biggest drug company on the planet is trying to push a breast cancer-treatment drug so it can reap the financial benefits ($5 BILLION a year)...

Some interesting facts however, stopped my eye-rolling. The discovery that certain kinases – which are proteins in the body that move molecules around so that cells get energy to keep splitting and making new cells – was made over a decade ago. Leland H. Hartwell, R. Timothy Hunt, and Paul M. Nurse received the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their complete description of cyclin and cyclin-dependent kinase mechanisms, which are central to the regulation of the cell cycle.

Since then, research into drugs that might inhibit – read “slam on the brakes for” – the progression of cancer cells from doing their normal job to growing without stopping and causing breast cancer, has been fast and furious.

The reason Pfizer wants to skip the usual protocols for drug development is that, besides making them more money than they would know what to do with and making their investors giddy with glee (how much would you like to wager that we’d find this little company in the stock portfolios of our nation’s and state’s legislators (Democrats AND Republicans AND Independents???)); the initial, Phase 2 testing produced almost no adverse reactions and a definite change in the speed at which breast cancer cells were dividing.

These cyclin dependent kinases are inhibited by particular enzymes (enzymes are proteins – which you all know are what meat, nuts and legumes) – hence the name Cyclin Dependent Kinase Inhibitors or CDKIs. So, the CDKIs slow down or stop the transfer of energy to cells. They can be selected to target very, very specific places on cells. This is how they can be used to target breast cancer cells.

So – Pfizer is waiting to hear from the FDA; but likely they will use the fact that the FDA has approved other new treatments for different types of cancer to hurry the approval along.

All that us normal people can do is wait and see.

Resources: http://www.vailworkshop.org/files/2010/LibraryResources/Schwartz%20References/Schwartz%20GK,%20Targeting%20the%20Cell%20Cycle.pdf, http://www.asianscientist.com/health-medicine/prmt6-suppression-linked-to-breast-cancer-2012/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclin-dependent_kinase, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclin-dependent_kinase_inhibitor_protein
Image: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/PDB_1jsu_EBI.jpg