Shocked -- SHOCKED!

....One of my favorite lines from Casablanca. If you don't catch the reference, shame on you -- go rent Casablanca.

The line came to me because of a recent press release from Cornell on Heat Shock Protein Inhibitors. One such inhibitor, called PU-H71, may block a key mechanism that allows Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma cells to do their evil thing.

Let's step back a moment. What are Heat Shock Proteins, first of all? HSPs, as they are called, are proteins in cells that allow the cell to minimize damage from stress brought on by heat, medicines, starvation, etc. They are good things -- they keep cells from dying when bad things happen to them. Researchers have known about HSPs for a long time, and study them to better understand how to keep cells (and people) from dying.

But, like everything about cell mechanisms that is good and protective, HSPs cause problems (like cancer) when they do their job a little too well.

Heat Shock Protein Inhibitors, as the name implies, inhibit HSPs, and keep them from protecting cells (like cancer cells, whch we don't want to be protected). Here's a nice article published about a month ago that explains what HSP Inhibitors are, and how researchers are using one called PES to block an HSP called HSP70.

Now, on to the NHL news from Cornell. Researchers found that an HSP called HSP90 seems to join up with and protect a protein called BCL6, which researchers know is present in a common, aggressive NHL called Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma (DLBCL). The Cornell researchers used an HSP Inhibitor (PU-H71) to block the HSP90 from helping out the BCL6; without it, the cancer cells are unprotected, and die.

So far, the HSP inhibitor has been very effective in laboratory models and animals tests. The next step is to start clinical trials with humans.

So it will be a while before it's available widely -- assuming it is as effective as it seems to be. But it's another reason for hope, and another possible triumph for micro-environment research. As the other linked article on that HSP70 shows, this could be a very important trend for research on lots of cancers. Very cool stuff.