Cancer Drug Targets

Cancer is a heterogeneous disease with a variety of survival mechanisms resulting from accumulated mutations that alter gene expression. Cancer research continually identifies novel dysregulated or mutated carcinogenesis-related genes, elucidating new mechanisms of cancer progression or treatment evasion. This suggests new avenues for drug development. Further research into these genes may identify how and when they are dysregulated, and potentially discover the underlying mechanisms behind cancer growth and progression. Multiple genes are potentially dysregulated or mutated during carcinogenesis, including genes involved in epigenetics and DNA damage repair. Oncogenic drug targets are often regulatory genes that affect entire biological processes or signaling pathways. One reason to identify and target these important genes is to increase the likelihood that a drug candidate will show high efficacy against the cancer of interest.

QIAGEN provides a broad range of assay technologies for cancer drug target research that enables analysis of gene expression and regulation, epigenetic modification, genotyping, and signal transduction pathway activation. Solutions optimized for cancer drug target studies include PCR array, miRNA, siRNA, mutation analysis, pathway reporter, chromatin IP, DNA methylation, and protein expression products.