NCI Director Harold VarmusWIKIMEDIA, NCIThe National Cancer Institute (NCI) this week announced plans for a new initiative to find a way to target a group of notorious cancer-driving proteins, known as RAS proteins, that have hitherto proven impossible to inhibit with drugs, reported ScienceInsider.
With $10 million redirected from other projects at the NCI’s National Laboratory for Cancer Research (NLCR) in Frederick, Maryland, the RAS project—which will be carried out at a dedicated lab on the same site, but will also work with outside researchers—has a clear goal: “Finally after 30 years of knowing how important RAS is in cancer, [the aim is] to actually produce some outcomes that are helpful to patients,” said NCI Director Harold Varmus at a joint meeting of the National Cancer Advisory Board and the NCI’s Board of Scientific Advisors.
A family of proteins found in all human cells, RAS proteins play a key role in signaling pathways that control cell growth, differentiation, and survival. Mutated RAS proteins that are permanently activated are found ...
