Jonas Cicenas

Pancreatic cancer is a disease that has a very high fatality rate and one of the highest mortality ratios among all major cancers, remaining the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in developed countries. The major treatment of pancreatic cancer is surgery; however, only 15-20% of patients are candidates for it at the diagnosis of disease. On the other hand, survival in patients, who undergo surgery, is less than 30%. In most cancers, genome stability is disturbed and pancreatic cancer is not the exception. Approximately 97% of pancreatic cancers have gene derangements, defined by point mutations, amplifications, deletions, translocations, and inversions. This review describes the most frequent genetic alterations found in pancreatic cancer.

Roscovitine [CY-202, (R)-Roscovitine, Seliciclib] is a small molecule that inhibits cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs) through direct competition at the ATP-binding site. It is a broad-range purine inhibitor, which inhibits CDK1, CDK2, CDK5 and CDK7, but is a poor inhibitor for CDK4 and CDK6. Roscovitine is widely used as a biological tool in cell cycle, cancer, apoptosis and neurobiology studies. Moreover, it is currently evaluated as a potential drug to treat cancers, neurodegenerative diseases, inflammation, viral infections, polycystic kidney disease and glomerulonephritis. This review focuses on the use of roscovitine in the disease model as well as clinical model research.

Protein kinases are a large family of enzymes catalyzing protein phosphorylation. The human genome contains 518 protein kinase genes, 478 of which belong to the classical protein kinase family and 40 are atypical protein kinases [...].

Mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAP kinases) are a family of kinases that regulates a range of biological processes implicated in the response to growth factors like latelet-derived growth factor (PDGF), epidermal growth factor (EGF), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), and stress, such as ultraviolet irradiation, heat shock, and osmotic shock. The MAP kinase family consists of four major subfamilies of related proteins (extracellular regulated kinases 1/2 (ERK1/2), c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK), p38, and extracellular regulated kinase 5 (ERK5)) and regulates numerous cellular activities, such as apoptosis, gene expression, mitosis, differentiation, and immune responses. The deregulation of these kinases is shown to be involved in human diseases, such as cancer, immune diseases, inflammation, and neurodegenerative disorders. The awareness of the therapeutic potential of the inhibition of MAP kinases led to a thorough search for small-molecule inhibitors. Here, we discuss some of the most well-known MAP kinase inhibitors and their use in cancer research.