Antitumor Compounds and Tumor Diagnosis

Eukaryotic translation initiation factors, or eIFs, are key regulators of protein biosynthesis. Changes in their expression can directly affect cellular processes involved in tumour initiation and progression, including cell viability, invasion, proliferation, and metastasis formation.

In most cases, tumors are currently treated by using chemotherapies, antibodies and further substance classes. Additionally, solid tumors are regularly treated using surgical methods. However, chemotherapeutics may be used only for specific tumor types and/or can cause various side effects.

With this patent, we provide a new approach to treat tumors using eIFs as targets. We consider eIFs as antitumor compounds and as tool for tumor diagnosis in CRC (especially separation in colon and rectal cancer), lung cancer, cholangiocellular carcinoma, pancreatic cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, lymphoma and glioma.

We have explored the role of currently known eIFs in lung cancer, colorectal cancer  and glioma, amongst others. We were able to identify a causal relationship between aberrant eIF expression and tumor development and showed that eIFs play a potential role as novel prognostic and predictive biomarkers as well as anti-tumorigenic approaches.

eIFs are promising targets for several tumor entities and could be used in cancer therapy and as potential prognostic biomarkers. Especially for glioma, the standard of care after tumor diagnosis did not change in the previous years, thus novel biomarkers for reliable prognosis, tumor diagnosis, monitoring of the course of cancer and determination of a treatment response are of high importance.