A new study from the University of Sheffield has shown that a compound that could be more effective in treating certain cancers than standard chemotherapy.
Previously, scientists have found that chemotherapy is the first line of defense for most cancer tumors and is often highly effective.
Nevertheless, many cancers are naturally resistant, or develop resistance, to commonly used first-line chemotherapy drugs like cisplatin.
In the present study, the researchers tested new drug-candidates that would work against these types of treatment resistant cancers.
They screened new compounds from lab to fight against a “panel” of cancers that were sensitive and resistant to standard cancer therapy.
They used a technique called “proteomics” to determine how thousands of proteins in the cells responded to exposure to the drug lead.
Proteomics is a remarkably powerful approach to identify how living things respond to new drug candidates.
They also examined the compounds with non-malignant cells to see how toxic they were to normal cells.
The results showed two lead compounds had low toxicity to non-malignant cells but were highly active against cancer cells sensitive or resistant to standard treatment.
In the future, the team plans to carry out further studies to find out if the compound can be used in combination with current treatments to improve their performance.
The study authors include Professor Jim Thomas from the University’s Department of Chemistry.
The research is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
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