drug target

Vitamin C, fish, and a gout drug target artery damage from smoking

Researchers have found that vitamin C and taurine, an amino acid in fish, reversed abnormal blood vessel response associated with cigarette smoking ? a discovery that may provide insight into how smoking contributes to “hardening of the arteries,” according to an Irish study in today’s rapid access issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. In a second study, researchers from Iowa demonstrated that a drug used to treat gout ? allopurinol ? rapidly reversed the abnormal blood vessel constriction caused by smoking.

Prostate drug stimulates cancer growth molecule

Better off without?Scientists have uncovered a cruel twist of fate in men who have advanced prostate cancer.
Doctors have long known that the medications they use to treat prostate cancer effectively for one to two years inevitably fail, leaving patients with few treatment options as the disease progresses, killing more than 30,000 men in the United States alone every year. Now scientists have discovered that at least one such medication has a completely unexpected side effect: The compound actually turns on a molecule known to cause cancerous cells to grow.

Researchers Elucidate Machinery of Major Anti-Cancer Drug Target

Researchers have detailed the functioning of an enzyme that is a central component of a signaling pathway important for about 30 percent of cancers. The findings about how the enzyme, called farnesyl transferase (FTase), works could help improve the FTase-inhibiting drugs that pharmaceutical companies are now testing to fight a broad spectrum of cancers.