Molecular Chaperones and Co-chaperones as Therapeutic Targets for Cancer

Cancer is a devastating disease that has affected millions of people, consumed tremendous efforts in the treatment/care and is incurable. Statistics from www.seer.cancer.gov show 14,140,254 people were living with cancer in 2013 in US with 1,685,210 new cases projected and 595,690 estimated deaths to occur due to cancer in 2016. Number of people surviving cancer (measured as 5-year survival rate) has increased by 18% (48.7% in 1975 to 66.9% in 2012) during the last half century. This number appears to be small if we consider the contribution of proactive care for example, early detections, and attention to life style and aggressive chemical/radiation therapy and at the same time stare at a bleak hope of any apparent breakthrough in next 10 years. On the other hand, gain of even a small percentage in the survival of cancer can be regarded significant considering its complexity in terms of causes, types, organs affected, severity, origins and metastasis each of which has made it very difficult to combat this disease (system) [1]. For the sake of comparison, unlike AIDS, cancer is not limited to a pathogen and immune system only and unlike Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s it is not restricted to one proteins and one organ only. This is not to say other diseases are less complex but certainly not as diverse as cancer. Hence, knowing well the challenges in dealing with an intricate system and to develop a cure, the need for extensive investigation in the area of cancer is imperative.