Lee F. Willoughby

TL;DR: The pilot screen has revealed that Drosophila tumours are glutamine-dependent, which is an emerging feature of many human cancers, and has validated the platform as a powerful and economical tool for in vivo chemical screening.

TL;DR: Signalling via the Tumour necrosis factor (TNF; also known as Egr)-ligand–JNK pathway is most likely the predominant pathway that activates JNK upon Rok activation, and highlights the need for further analysis of the Rok–Myosin-II pathway in cooperation with Ras.

TL;DR: This work suggests that EMT-promoting signals in human cancers could similarly utilize networks of these proteins to promote cancer stem cell states.

TL;DR: An overexpression screen for oncogenes capable of cooperating with the loss of the epithelial apico-basal cell polarity regulator, scribbled, identified the cell fate regulator, Abrupt, a BTB-zinc finger protein and demonstrated that epithelial tumours in Drosophila can be characterised by the maintenance of a progenitor-like state.

TL;DR: Drosophila is an excellent model organism for cost-effective high-throughput in vivo screening for anti-cancer compounds relevant to human cancer and its use in identifying drugs that can specifically target tumours in vivo is beginning to make an important contribution to the current drug discovery pipeline.