Cancer Informatics in the U.K.: The NCRI Informatics Initiative

The arrival of high-throughput technologies in cancer science and medicine has made the possibility for knowledge generation greater than ever before. However, this has brought with it real challenges as researchers struggle to analyse the avalanche of information available to them. A unique U.K.-based initiative has been established to promote data sharing in cancer science and medicine and to address the technical and cultural issues needed to support this

Synthesis and biological evaluation of novel pyrrolo[2,1-c][1,4]benzodiazepine prodrugs for use in antibody-directed enzyme prodrug therapy

The design, synthesis and evaluation of four novel pyrrolo[2,1-c][1,4] benzodiazepine (PBD) prodrugs (1a,b and 2a,b; Fig. 1) for potential use in carboxypeptidase G2 (CPG2)-based antibody-directed enzyme prodrug therapy (ADEPT) is reported. Although all four prodrugs were shown to be less cytotoxic than the released parent PBDs 3 and 4, the urea prodrugs 1b and 2b were found to be too unstable for use in ADEPT, whereas carbamates 1a and 2a are both stable in an aqueous environment and are good substrates for CPG2. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved