92nd AACR. Novel molecular targets and drugs

Novel targets and new drugs continue to emerge. Many new agents are identified from natural products, while new targets are being explored by the emerging gene expression microarray technologies. Rather than attempt to review all the new drugs and targets included in the Experimental/Molecular Therapeutics subsection of the 92nd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), selected compounds and methodologies are described. Novel drugs include several from marine species, mushrooms and other natural products. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the number of reports using gene expression microarrays to define new targets and mechanisms of resistance has increased substantially. However, methods for mining these complex, high-dimensional data sets remain largely simple and inefficient. Most investigators appear to look for arbitrary fold-differences, fewer use relatively simple hierarchical clustering, with only a small minority using the potentially more powerful multidimensional scaling methods and self-organizing maps. While much of the information contained in the large data sets presented likely remains hidden, these new technologies provide powerful approaches to assess global changes in gene expression and identify new molecular targets for drug discovery.