Drugging protein kinases in cancer: from small molecules to nanoparticles

MOJ Proteomics Bioinform 2017, 5(5): 00173 upstream protein kinase. Deregulated kinase activity is a frequent cause of disease, particularly cancer, where they regulate many aspects important in tumor progression and metastasis. In several instances protein kinases regulates cancer progression by phosphorylating ontogenesis and tumor suppressor proteins thereby regulating the activity, stability, and function [4-8]. Interestingly, many of the tumor suppressor genes and dominant oncogenes identified so far are also protein kinases. Kinases such as c-Src, c-Abl, mitogen activated protein (MAP) kinase, phosphotidylinositol-3-kinase (PI3K) AKT, and the epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor are commonly activated in cancer cells, and are known to contribute to tumor genesis [9-13].Given their importance in human diseases such as cancer, protein kinases have emerged as attractive therapeutic targets.