Raiding the pharmacy: Genomic screening identifies known chemotherapies as negative regulators of MCL1

Abstract

Despite multiple studies demonstrating the importance of the anti-apoptotic protein Mcl-1 in tumor cell survival and treatment resistance, a clinically important inhibitor has yet to be developed. A recent study by Guo Wei and colleagues published in Cancer Cell has utilized a novel high-throughput approach to identify compounds that act as transcriptional repressors of MCL1 expression. Their findings identified a number of candidate drugs to be tested for clinical relevance in human cancers dependent on MCL1 expression. © 2012 BioMed Central Ltd.