An American scientific team has developed a drug capable of slowing the growth of tumors and enhancing the effectiveness of immunotherapy.
- Present in many cancers, the 9p21 deletion hinders the normal functioning of immune cells and blocks the effectiveness of immunotherapies.
- Scientists have developed a drug to restore the effectiveness of immune cells.
- This drug notably slowed the growth of tumors in mice.
Cancers with 9p21 deletion are associated with poorer treatment outcomes and resistance to immunotherapies. Genetic deletion is a mechanism which results in the loss of a more or less important fragment of DNA, constituting a cause of mutation.
Using an enzyme to fight cancer
The 9p21 deletion, the most common of all cancers, causes the loss of some key genes in cancer cells, particularly a pair of genes producing cell cycle regulators. Due to the loss of these genes, cells can grow out of control and become cancerous. A gene producing an enzyme, which breaks down the MTA toxin, is also suppressed, hindering the normal functioning of immune cells as well as the effectiveness of immunotherapies.
In a study published in the journal Cancer CellLresearchers have developed a drug capable of restoring the effectiveness of immune cells, in order to fight cancer.
For the development of this drug, scientists at the University of Texas at Austin (USA) used the enzyme naturally produced by the body to break down the MTA toxin, and also added flexible polymers to it. “It is already a very good enzyme, but we needed to optimize it so that it lasts longer in the body (…) If we injected only the natural enzyme, it would be eliminated in a few hours. In mice, our modified version stays in circulation for days. In humans, it will last even longer.”explained Everett Stone, lead author of the study and research associate professor in the Department of Molecular Biosciences and Oncology at Dell Medical School.
PEG-MTAP drug: promising first results
Those responsible for this work found that their drug slowed the growth of tumors, prolonged lifespan and increased the effectiveness of immunotherapy in mice affected by bladder and colon cancers, leukemias and than melanomas. Soon, the American team wishes to begin safety tests on their drug, called PEG-MTAP. Fundraising is also planned, in order to submit it to clinical trials in humans.
