Anticancer agents exhibit poor selectivity towards
cancer cells thus leading to significant systemic toxicity. Enzyme-prodrug targeting strategy could potentially reduce systemic toxicity and increase the
therapeutic index of chemotherapeutic agents. In this project, bioinformatic tools such as Perl®, Visual Basic®, Cluster® and TreeView ® were used to analyze public gene
expression databases to identify potential enzyme targets. The analyses indicated prolidase to be a desirable enzyme target based on its high expression in melanoma cell lines and specificity for dipeptide substrates containing proline at the carboxy terminus. RT-PCR expression of prolidase was determined in tumor cell…
