Heat Shock Protein 90 inhibitors target many oncoproteins in the signal network we have shown is co-activated in HNSCC. In collaborative studies, we recently reported that HSP90 inhibitors target overexpressed Epidermal growth factor receptor, downstream signaling, and strongly inhibit human HNSCC xenografts (Ahsan et al., Neoplasia, 2012). We report that HSP90 inhibitor SNX5422/2112 in phase I studies at NIH broadly inhibited oncogenic signal and transcription factors and reactivates wild type p53 in human HNSCC lines and tumor xenograft models (Friedman et al., Translational Oncol, 2013). Inflammation and inflammatory signaling is implicated in promoting cancer development, including human head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCC). We recently demonstrated that NF-kB transcription factor c-REL interacts with TP53 family members DeltaNp63 and TAp73 to reciprocally activate inflammatory and cancer related genes, while repressing growth arrest and proapoptotic genes in HNSCC (Lu, Cancer res, 2011;Yang, Cancer Res, 2011). The PI3K-CK2 signal kinases are implicated in modulating the reciprocal regulation of REL oncogene and TP53 family tumor suppressor function. Together, these findings suggest signal regulation coordinating NF-kB, p63 and p73 interactions and function may be important in pathogenesis and as targets for prevention and therapy.
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