Transcription factors as potential targets for therapeutic drugs

Although drugs which target transcription are in wide therapeutic use, they were all identified on the basis of their effect on a specific biological process such as inflammation or hormone responses and were only subsequently shown to target transcription. Our recent progress in understanding the mechanism of action of these drugs and the mechanisms of transcriptional regulation in general offers hope for a new generation of drugs isolated on the basis of their ability to modulate either the synthesis of transcription factors, the regulation of their activity by ligands or phosphorylation events, their protein-protein interactions or their binding to DNA.