Colino Quinasa como nueva diana terapéutica en Cáncer

Abstract

Cancer is one of the most prevalent and devastating genetical diseases in developed countries, showing a high degree of mortality. Carcinogenic cells are characterized by the accumulation of numerous genetic alterations, thus modifying transductional signalling pathways that participate in cellular proliferation, differentiation and apoptosis, ultimately being responsible of the carcinogenic processes. As a consequence, lots of efforts have been dedicated to the design of specific molecules prone to interfere with the intracellular signalling involved in different tumorgenic events. However, it is still required developing novel antitumoral therapies which may allow the appropriate treatment for either each individual patient or particular tumor, a fact that may have a high impact in improving antitumoral therapies. Thus, an important requirement is the identification of the molecular compounds involved in aberrant cell processes, in order to obtain specific therapeutic chemicals which may participate in, both,cellular recovering and selective transformed cell destruction. The development of novel therapeutical agents is probably one of the most promising strategies to obtain succesful results in cancer treatment, and the design of "intelligent" drugs may be a key factor to achieve this goal. Therefore, the identification of available cancerogenic targets would be of extreme usefulness for future therapies. This review provides enough evidences suggesting, that choline kinase (ChoK) is a new therapeutic target.