Research into cancer causes

 My friend is currently working on his PhD in chemistry, and just so happens his research team is doing very basic (which doesn't mean simple, but refers to the organizational level. Mine's applied because I work with people, his is basic because he works with cells and sub-cellular molecules, which is the basis of all the knowledge I apply) research on cancer, and I asked him to write up a little description of this work. He wrote me two small paragraphs, which I'll post after the jump. When I read them, I really did not understand what he was talking about, so I got him to email me a quick synopsis.

"essentially they are signalling molecules for many processes, ion channel, pumps and transporters (calcium..etc), vesicular trafficking, endo and exocytosis, secretion, cell death and cell metabolism. The point of this fundamental work is understand these pathways with more clarity in order to potentially find new drug targets."

And to sum it all up: they're trying to understand how a cancer cell works, because we really don't have that good of an idea yet. For those chemically inclined, click the more link below.


Polyphosphorylated myo-inositol compounds, including the inositol polyphosphates (IPs),
diphosphoinositol polyphosphates (PP-IPs), and phosphatidylinositol polyphosphates (PIPs),
are extremely important naturally ocuring small molecules that regulate an exceptional amount of critical biological processes. These compounds have many combinations of phosphorylation patterns, resulting in a complex network of inter-converting signaling molecules that are the focus in the control of many biological mechanisms. Due to their importance, often involved in many different pathways with strong disease association: such as diabetes and cancer, the synthesis and biological evaluation of this family of molecules has obtained quite an interest from chemical, biological and biochemical researches alike. Within this broad effort, strategies employing chemical synthesis for the production of both natural products and chemically modified structures have proven advantageous for determining activities.

The cytoplasmic functions of the lipid-anchored inositides, PIPs, have been reviewed and include essential structural and signaling roles in vesicular trafficking, actin cytoskeleton rearrangements, and Akt signaling. On the other hand, soluble phosphoinositides, IPs, have been found to have roles in nuclear processes - especially in gene expression.