Background

Considerable efforts have been invested in recent years in developing new, effective, yet less toxic drugs for targeted cancer therapy. Currently, this diverse group of drugs includes monoclonal antibodies, immunomodulators, proteasome inhibitors, tyrosine kinase inhibitors, and deacetylation agents.

Another approach to treating malignancies is the use of chimeric proteins.

Chimeric proteins, designed and constructed by gene fusion techniques, comprise both the cell targeting and the “active” moieties.

We now propose human pro-apoptotic proteins as new “active” domains of chimeric proteins to induce death of target cancer cells.