The multifaceted roles of tumor-associated proteases and harnessing their activity for prodrug activation

Abstract The role of proteases in cancer was originally thought to be limited to the breakdown of basement membranes and extracellular matrix (ECM), thereby promoting cancer cell invasion into surrounding normal tissues. It is now well understood that proteases play a much more complicated role in all stages of cancer progression and that not only tumor cells, but also stromal cells are an important source of proteases in the tumor microenvironment. Among all the proteolytic enzymes potentially associated with cancer, some proteases have taken on heightened importance due to their significant up-regulation and ability to participate at multiple stages of cancer progression and metastasis. In this review, we discuss some of the advances in understanding of the roles of several key proteases from different classes in the development and progression of cancer and the potential to leverage their upregulated activity for the development of novel targeted treatment strategies.

• Publication year

  2019

• Venue

  Biological chemistry

• Publication date

  2019-07-26

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1515/hsz-2018-0451PMID 30913028
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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