ERROR 1
ERROR 1
ERROR 2
ERROR 2
ERROR 2
ERROR 2
ERROR 2
Password and Confirm password must match.
If you have an ACS member number, please enter it here so we can link this account to your membership. (optional)
ERROR 2
ACS values your privacy. By submitting your information, you are gaining access to C&EN and subscribing to our weekly newsletter. We use the information you provide to make your reading experience better, and we will never sell your data to third party members.
If you want to stop cancer, it may be best to stop a hedgehog first, a new study finds. Stuart L. Schreiber of the Broad Institute and Harvard University and coworkers report having identified robotnikinin, the first small molecule that binds and inhibits Sonic hedgehog, a signaling protein that plays key roles in development and cancer (Nat. Chem. Biol., DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.142). Other compounds that inhibit hedgehog signaling have been developed, and some are in drug trials, but they interact not with the hedgehog protein itself but with Smoothened, a transmembrane receptor in a downstream part of the signaling pathway. Schreiber and coworkers attempted something a lot more difficult—finding a small molecule that blocks the protein-protein interaction between hedgehog and its direct target, either a receptor called Patched or an auxiliary coreceptor. Blocking hedgehog signaling at two possible sites, Smoothened and Patched, “increases the probability of at least one of them being successful,” Schreiber says. Animal studies of robotnikinin “have yielded encouraging early results” that could open the way to human clinical investigations, Schreiber notes.
Join the conversation
Contact the reporter
Submit a Letter to the Editor for publication
Engage with us on Twitter