Activation of p53 can suppress tumor growth through more than one mechanism. It can interfere with the cell cycle, prompting a cell with unrepaired DNA damage to commit suicide through a complex signaling pathway called apoptosis. Alternatively, p53 may trigger cellular senescence in response to DNA damage or cellular stress.
The expression of p53 is regulated by Mdm2, a protein that is overexpressed in several human cancers. Nutlins are small-molecule inhibitors that prevent the p53 protein from forming a complex with Mdm2, resulting in activation of p53. Previous studies have shown that nutlin can induce apoptosis in human cancer cells.
Protein interactions play significant roles in various aspects of the structural and functional organization of the cell, and their elucidation sheds light on the molecular mechanisms of biological processes. Having a network of protein interactions will allow researchers to identify drugs that target pathways related to a specific disease while avoiding pathways associated with unwanted side effects and toxicity. Key to advancing our knowledge of biochemical pathways and networks is the intelligent analysis and mining of available literature, which is a vast resource of information on thousands of interactions.NetPro™ is the largest database in the world (expertly curated) on protein-protein interactions. NetPro™ would be invaluable to any investigator in shortlist his genes of interest from a high-throughput experiment as it's interactive query interface (WebMINE) provides answers for questions like,
- Is the protein a surface receptor?
- Is it a major switch?
- Is it Druggable?
- What is the patent position on the same?
- What is the nearest path between the 2 genes of my interest?
- Is this protein known to be involved in a particular disease/pathway
