New tools for the antimitotic toolbox
Compton, D.A.
Science 286(5441): 913-914
1999
ISSN/ISBN: 0036-8075 PMID: 10577242 Document Number: 505237
In this issue, T. U. Mayer and colleagues report that they have identified a new compound that can be used in the fight against cancer. Some tumor cells may proliferate more quickly than normal cells, so a common strategy for chemotherapy has been to produce drugs that interrupt the cell cycle. A particularly good stage of the cell cycle for intervention is mitosis, during which the mitotic spindle--a complex microtubule-based structure--separates the replicated chromosomes. Mayer and colleagues have combined two phenotype-based screening assays to identify a compound that blocks mitosis by binding to a kinesin, a motor protein that is crucial to the production of a bipolar spindle.