Evolving Therapies and FAK Inhibitors for the Treatment of Cancer

Kelli      Bullard Dunn; Melissa      Heffler; Vita      M. Golubovskaya

doi:10.2174/187152010794728657

Abstract

Despite advances in medical and surgical therapy, cancer kills more than half a million people in the United States annually, and the majority of these patients succumb to metastatic disease. The traditional approach to treating systemic disease has been the use of cytotoxic chemotherapy. However, chemotherapy is rarely curative and toxicity is often dose limiting. In addition, the effects of chemotherapy are nonspecific, targeting both malignant and normal tissues. As a result, recent efforts increasingly have focused on developing agents that target specific molecules in tumor cells in order to both improve efficacy and limit toxicity. This review summarizes the history and current use of targeted molecular therapy for cancer, with a special emphasis on recently developed inhibitors of Focal Adhesion Kinase (FAK).

Keywords: Angiogenesis, carcinogenesis, focal adhesion kinase, targeted therapeutics, tyrosine kinase, Cancer, metastatic disease, cytotoxic chemotherapy, Tyrosine Kinase inhibitors, chronic myelogenous leukemia, RTK induces, CDK, Epidermal growth factor receptor, Vascular endothelial growth factor, flavopiridol