KANÄ°LTEK
(Cancer Drug
Technologies) project has been established by
a three year
long support from DPT (Governmental Planning
Organization). The Project was proposed by Bilkent University in
collaboration with Hacettepe University, Koç University and
Middle East Technical
University.
The subject of KANÄ°LTEK project is discovery of new anti-cancer drug
candidates and development of these until preclinical phase studies.
The project aims at gene-targeted
anti-cancer drug development such
that the
treatment potentials of natural plant chemicals, synthetic
chemicals, recombinant proteins, monoclonal antibodies and
siRNA-lentiviruses will be assessed in their effect on selected target
proteins and genes that are known to be abnormally activated or over
expressed in cancer. In recent years, this type of target-driven drugs
has become the driving force of modern biotechnology based drug
industry. The annual sales of such a drug is around a billion dollars.
Consequently, the market values of biotechnology product molecules of
high potential that are in preclinical phase studies currently remain
high. Due to these reasons and considering the country advantages, a
large scope project aiming at new drug discovery has been
proposed.