Coactivators are promising targets for drug therapies in the treatment of cancer, metabolic disorder, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, along with many other disorders. For example, the steroid receptor coactivator (SCR) NCOA3 is often overexpressed in breast cancer, so the development of an inhibitor molecule that targets this coactivator and decreases its expression could be used as a potential treatment for breast cancer.
Because transcription factors control many different biological processes, they are ideal targets for drug therapy. The coactivators that regulate them can be easily replaced with a synthetic ligand that allows for control over an increase or decrease in gene expression.
Further technological advances will provide new insights into the function and regulation of coactivators at a whole-organism level and elucidate their role in human disease, which will hopefully provide better targets for future drug therapies.