Fighting Cancer Using Molecular Modeling and NMR Spectroscopy

Within the vast weaponry of available chemotherapies, one in particular, the targeted therapy, has captivated the interest and research efforts of many pharmaceutical companies and universities around the globe in the last 20 years. Developing drugs capable of interrupting one or more key oncogenic pathways in a specific fashion, has offered the opportunity of doubling the overall survival time and cure chances of millions of patients today. Among these drugs, we find those inhibiting the mitogenic signal activated by the Human Epidermal growth factor Receptor 2 (HER2), determinant of a very aggressive type of breast and gastric cancer. This work aims at developing new small molecules able to block the interaction of HER2 with its adapter protein Grb2 in order to prevent its oncogenic signal from reaching the cell nucleus and unleashing a typical overstimulated mitosis. To do so, we have followed a rational drug design supported by an NMR-guided optimization and a series of biological assays that finally led us to non-peptide compounds competent to selectively bind the Grb2 protein. I hope you find this book interesting and in some way helpful to your own research.