Laurent Désaubry
Tianjin University of Science and Technology, China
Title: Anticancer agents used in traditional Chinese medicine that target prohibitins and the translation initiation factor eIF4a
Biography
Biography: Laurent Désaubry
Abstract
Flavaglines are a family of anticancer natural products that relieve the resistance to cancer chemotherapies and display a strong cytotoxicity that is specific to cancer cells in a low nanomolar range. Not only flavaglines are not toxic to non-cancer cells, but they protect normal cells from various stresses. Thus, we demonstrated for the first time that these compounds protect the heart and neurons from the adverse effects of cancer chemotherapies involving anthracyclines and cisplatin. We also identified the scaffold proteins prohibitins-1 and -2 (PHB1/2) as the molecular targets of flavaglines. The binding of flavaglines to PHBs prevents their interaction with C-Raf and, thereby, inhibits C-Raf activation, which is critical to the survival and proliferation of cancer cells. Flavaglines also directly inhibit another emerging target in oncology, the translation initiation factor eIF4a. In vivo data indicate that flavaglines could greatly improve the treatment of chemoresistant metastatic melanoma.
