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Chemical biology

Many faces of a cancer-supporting protein

Nature volume 478, pages 334–335 (2011)Cite this article

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A Correction to this article was published on 26 October 2011

The protein Hsp90 is a target of promising anticancer drugs. An analysis of the components of Hsp90 complexes in tumours reveals a path that may lead to predictive assays of drug sensitivity in cancer patients.

The protein Hsp90 is a molecular chaperone — it assists in the correct folding of other cellular proteins. Many of these Hsp90 'client' proteins are overexpressed and/or mutated in cancer and are involved in maintaining the cancerous state1. Hsp90 inhibition is therefore an attractive strategy for simultaneously blocking multiple abnormal pathways that are crucial for many tumour types2. Indeed, early clinical trials have confirmed the therapeutic potential of this approach. But understanding the mechanism that ensures selective targeting of tumour cells by Hsp90 inhibitors, and finding biomarkers to predict which cancers will be most sensitive to such treatment, has proved challenging. Writing in Nature Chemical Biology, Moulick et al.3 use chemical proteomics — a combination of chemical precipitation and multi-protein profiling — to shed light on these questions.

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Figure 1: Analysis of Hsp90-containing complexes using chemical proteomics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. John F. Darby and Paul Workman are in the Cancer Research UK Cancer Therapeutics Unit, Institute of Cancer Research, Haddow Laboratories, Sutton, Surrey SM2 5NG, UK.,

    John F. Darby & Paul Workman

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  1. John F. Darby
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  2. Paul Workman
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Correspondence to Paul Workman.

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Competing interests

J.F.D. is a PhD student at and P.W. is an employee of the Institute of Cancer Research, which has a commercial interest in Hsp90 inhibitors. P.W. has been involved in a funded research collaboration on Hsp90 inhibitors with Vernalis Ltd. Intellectual property arising from the Hsp90 programme has been licensed to Vernalis and Novartis. P.W. has been a consultant to Novartis.

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Darby, J., Workman, P. Many faces of a cancer-supporting protein. Nature 478, 334–335 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/478334b

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