(Medical Xpress) -- Researchers at Johns Hopkins have shown that
DNA changes in a gene that drives the growth of a form of lung
cancer can make the cancers cells resistant to cancer drugs. The
findings show that some classes of drugs wont work, and certain
types of so-called kinase inhibitors like erlotinibmay be the
most effective at treating non-small cell lung cancers with
those DNA changes. Some kinase inhibitors block a protein known
as EGFR from directing cells to multiply. In their paper
published online November 20 in Nature Structural & Molecular
Biology, the researchers describe the molecular details of how
some cancer drugs work. Some anticancer pharmaceuticals that we
showed to be ineffective made it to clinical trials because they
appeared to prevent the EGFR protein from sending growth
signals, says Philip A. Cole, M.D., Ph.D., Director and E.K.
Marshall and Thomas H. Maren Professor of Pharmacology and
Molecular Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine. But we found that diff