Many of these new agents or treatment strategies have also been incorporated into combination therapy involving

conventional anticancer drugs in several clinical trials, which may help enhance currently available treatment modalities. However, some puzzling and troubling questions such as whether these treatment strategies induce resistance in tumours and whether they will cause normal cells to die in massive numbers still remain unanswered. This is a true concern if lessons were to be learnt from the conventional anticancer drugs, which wipe out both normal cells and tumour cells and cause brutal side effects and tumour resistance. On the other hand, it would be of clinical benefit, if these molecules that target apoptosis are specifically acting

on a single find more pathway or protein. However, this website most of the molecules that enter clinical trials act on several targets and these include many inhibitors of the Bcl-family QNZ nmr of proteins and some pan-IAP inhibitors. Hence, evidence-based long-term follow ups on patients receiving these new cancer treatments are needed and ongoing research should focus on those strategies that can selectively induce apoptosis in malignant cells and not the normal ones. Acknowledgements The author would like to acknowledge the International Medical University, Malaysia for funding research that led to the writing of this work (grant number: 231/2011). References 1. Bauer JH, Hefand SL: New tricks of an old molecule: lifespan regulation by p53. Aging Cell 2006, 5:437–440.PubMedCrossRef 2. Gasco M, Shami S, Crook T: The p53 pathway in breast cancer. Breast Cancer Res 2002, 4:70–76.PubMedCrossRef 3. Rodrigues NR, Rowan A, Smith ME, Kerr IB, Bodmer WF, Gannon JV, Lane DP: p53 mutations in colorectal cancers. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 1990,87(19):7555–7559.PubMedCrossRef 4. Morton JP, Timpson

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