RITA – p53 activation in medulloblastoma as a new approach for treatment?

Current therapy of medulloblastoma (MB), the most common malignant brain tumor of childhood, achieves 40–70% survival. Chemotherapy resistence development contributes to treatment failure, where p53 pathway dysfunction plays a key role. Interaction of MDM2 with p53 leads to its degradation, and reactivating p53 functionality using small-molecule inhibitors, such as RITA, to disrupt p53-MDM2 binding may have therapeutic potential. MDM2 expression was analyzed in primary MBs, normal cerebellum and 5 MB cell lines with varying TP53 mutational status. Cell viability, proliferation and apoptosis and MDM2, p53 and p21…