Researchers “drug the undruggable”

A new approach to targeting key cancer-linked proteins, thought to be ‘undruggable’, has been discovered through an alliance between industry and academia created by Cancer Research UK.  David Komander’s group in the LMB is one of the groups involved in this unique collaboration, that shows that two novel and specific small-molecule inhibitors developed by the alliance can bind to and deactivate an enzyme that controls the stability of the p53 tumour suppressor protein. This deactivation allows p53 to be turned on, putting the brakes on cancer growth. More…