BioCentury
ARTICLE | Cover Story

IRS audit for tumors

May 23, 2013 7:00 AM UTC

An Israeli academic-industry partnership has discovered small molecules that interfere wi th signaling by insulin-like growth factor-1 receptor, a cancer-associated receptor tyrosine kinase. The new compounds, licensed to NovoTyr Therapeutics Ltd., could be superior to conventional approaches to hitting this target because they cause destruction of two key downstream effectors, insulin receptor substrate 1 and insulin receptor substrate 2.1

Excessive activity of insulin-like growth factor-1 receptor (IGF1R; CD221) is a common feature in many tumor types. When activated by extracellular ligands such as insulin and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), IGF1R recruits the intracellular proteins insulin receptor substrate 1 (IRS1) and IRS2 to relay a proliferative signal to a range of downstream pathways that drive tumor growth.2...