"These are drugs that did not even think about cancer": Israeli breakthrough in the treatment of deadly tumors • If approved, the drug may save the patient chemotherapy
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Prof. Boaz Tirosh, a lecturer and researcher at the School of Medicine at the Hebrew University's Faculty of Medicine, found an innovative way to deal with two of the deadliest cancers in the world. R. Muhammad Mahamid investigates the movement of intracellular proteins in cancer under different drug combinations.
During the study, also published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Communication, the researchers managed to come up with a unique drug combination between two types of drug - a combination that has been proven effective against liver cancer and skin cancer in mice, and is expected to go through the clinical trials in the next phase. This breakthrough may also lead to a change in attitude towards the study of these cancers.
In order to achieve an increased effect on the eradication of cancer cells, usually during the fight against human body disease, anticancer drugs that operate in different mechanisms are combined. This approach increases the effectiveness of the treatment but also its side effects. That is, other mechanisms in the body are also affected by the disease.
In contrast, drug combinations, each of which is non-toxic but safe to use, do not currently exist in the treatment of violent cancer. However, according to the results of the study, it was found that the use of an antiviral drug originally intended for AIDS patients, along with a clinical development drug to treat memory loss, has led to an anticancer response to liver and skin cancers. The discovery showed that combining the two led to an effective response.
"This is a combination that is not anti-cancer drugs, but drugs that do not even think about cancer," Professor Tirosh explains. The peculiarity of the finding was that the mechanism of action of the drug combination involved the confinement of key proteins in cancer development and preventing their presentation across the cell membrane. This phenomenon has not been previously reported and may constitute an alternative therapeutic approach for the use of reactions known as kinase inhibitors (important proteins in the body that regulate cell growth and distribution), which have severe side effects and the development of cancer resistance to treatments.
As a model for assessing treatment efficacy, the researchers used liver cancer cells and skin cancers (melanoma), both of which are violent cancers with low survival rates. In both cases, the drug combination showed significant efficacy to the absolute disappearance of laboratory animal growth.
In the future, if the drug is approved for human use, it may save the patient the harsh chemotherapy. "The findings were very surprising," concludes Prof. Tirosh. "Protein imprisonment is usually achieved by highly toxic substances. In this case, this was done by a safe drug combination that showed a specific anti-cancer effect.
Despite the joy, it will take many more years for the drug to become useful and available to cancer patients. "Despite the scientific breakthrough we found, the road to the clinic is still long and requires a lot of work and investment, but our work certainly shows the feasibility," concludes Prof. Tirosh.