Identification of P53-activating Compounds for Cancer Research and Therapy

An exciting,new invention from the laboratory of Dr. Scott Kern at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine for the identification of p53 activating compounds that I thought would be of interest to In Vitro Technologies. As you are aware, the status of p53 varies among human tumors and has been associated with prognosis and response to therapy in many cancers. P53 is an inducer of apoptosis and is activated in response to some chemotherapeutic agents. The relationship between p53 response and clinical efficacy of chemotherapy remains unclear. Dr. Kern and his colleagues have constructed a high-throughput screen to detect whole cell p53 responses to compounds using a p53 reporter system to measure response to a wide-range of conventional chemotherapeutic agents, as well as over 16,000 random small molecule compounds. Two thirds of conventional chemotherapeutic agents activated p53 while only 0.2% of random compounds did. Cell death was found to be independent of p53 status when chemotherapeutics that activate p53 were used on p53+/+ and p53-/- cells. Therefore, p53 response is a surrogate marker and not a mediator of apoptosis. Novel compounds identified in transcriptional screens of p53 are an enriched source of potential therapeutics.

Inventor(s): Kern, Scott

Type of Offer: Licensing



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