Biological Relevance and Therapeutic Potential of G-Quadruplexes in Cancer
A special issue of Cancers (ISSN 2072-6694). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Cancer Biology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 December 2022) | Viewed by 2973
Special Issue Editors
Interests: DNA and RNA G-quadruplexes; G-quadruplexes aptamers; G-quadruplex ligands; biomolecular interactions; biophysical techniques; drug design and development; cancer; drug delivery systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: biopharmaceuticals; recombinant production; downstream processing; chromatography; gene therapy; gene silencing; health biotechnology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
DNA and RNA can adopt four-stranded G-quadruplex (G4) structures through self-association of four guanine bases by Hoogsteen hydrogen bonding within a planar G-tetrad.
Self-stacking of two or more G-tetrads generates a G4 structure that is further stabilized by cations (mainly potassium or sodium) and small molecules, which have been evaluated as a novel anti-cancer strategy.
Several biophysical and structural studies evidence G4 formation in regulatory regions, such as human telomeres, oncogene-promoter regions, replication initiation sites, and 5′- and 3′-untranslated regions (UTR) of mRNA. For example, several experiments using molecular and cell biology methods have demonstrated that G4s exist in chromatin DNA and in RNA, linking G4s to biological processes ranging from transcription and translation to genome instability and cancer, emerging as a new class of molecular targets for drug development.
This Special Issue will highlight the DNA and RNA G4s’ biological roles and mechanisms of action to better understand the molecular basis of related diseases as well as to envision the development of novel therapeutic strategies. This will cover both basic and (pre)clinical aspects that will advance our understanding of the possibility to target these structures in human tumors and unravel the relation between G4 formation and lethality of cancer cells to consider G4s as therapeutic targets in cancer.
Dr. Carla Cruz
Dr. Fani Pereira de Sousa
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- DNA and RNA G-quadruplexes
- G-quadruplex (G4)
- novel anti-cancer strategy
- molecular targets
- cancer
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