My name is Brandy Sikic from Stanford. I would like to thank Jack
and Charlie for inviting me to organize a session on drug resistance.
Just by way of introduction, let me say that, from the perspective
of developmental therapeutics, drug development, understanding
why our drugs don't work is probably as important as understanding
how they work. We get insights into therapeutic development there,
and I think as we understand more about the gene expression patterns
of cancers, we will be able to better identify targets and hopefully
eventually tailor therapies as well.
The title
of this session is why is gastric cancer resistant to therapies,
and are there ways to overcome resistance. I work mostly on drug
transporters. Little is known about drug transporters in gastric
cancer. There are some Japanese data which indicates that a minority
of gastric cancers express P glycoprotein, the MDR-1 gene product,
and MRP doesn't seem to play a major role, at least to date.
I think it is safe to say that the P glycoprotein drug transporter
plays a much lesser role in gastric cancer than it does in colorectal
cancers, where it is expressed at high levels in the majority
of tumors.
That gave
me some leeway to organize this session around other topics, and
we have three speakers. Gary Schwartz from Memorial Hospital will
lead with a presentation on cell cycle regulation and growth factor
signalling.The more we learn about growth factor signalling, the
more we realize that it is intimately intertwined with cell survival
factors, and the regulation of apoptosis, and that inhibition
of certain cell growth signals may actually sensitize tumors to
chemotherapy.
The second
speaker will be Heinz-Josef Lenz from the University of Southern
California, who will be speaking about various mechanisms of chemoresistance
and gastric cancers, I assume largely the fluropyrimidines but
perhaps others.
Lastly, Jim
Ford, my colleague from Stanford, will be talking about p53 and
drug sensitivity. So, Gary, why don't you begin cell cycle regulation
and growth factor signalling.
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