Editor’s note: this is the first in a series of posts highlighting drug screening studies in our Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics. Read the second post here.
To metastasize, some types of cancer cells rely on invadopodia, cellular membrane projections that help them “walk” away from the primary tumor. To determine how cells control invadopodia formation, scientists at Sanford-Burnham took advantage of the technology and expertise of the Institute’s Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics to screen a collection of pharmacologically active compounds to identify those that either promote or inhibit the process.
The study identified several compounds that block invadopodia and found that many of the compounds targeted Cdks, a family of enzymes that were not previously associated with invadopodia. One of these enzymes, Cdk5, is required for the formation and function of invadopodia and for cellular invasion.
