Prof. Boaz Tirosh, a lecturer and researcher at the School of Pharmacy at the Faculty of Medicine of the Hebrew University, has been researching the cellular response to cell proliferation in cells for over two decades. He is currently facing a scientific breakthrough in cancer research. Published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Communication, Prof. Tirosh and his research students, Dr. Muhammad Mahamid, examined the movement of intracellular proteins in cancer under various drug combinations. During their examination, the researchers succeeded in reaching a unique drug combination between Liver cancer and skin cancer in mice when in the next stage it is expected to move to the clinical trials stage.This breakthrough may also lead to a change in attitude towards the study of these cancers.
In order to achieve an increased effect of eradicating cancer cells, anti-cancer drugs that work by different mechanisms are usually combined. This approach increases the effectiveness of the treatment but also its side effects. However, drug combinations, each of which alone is non-toxic but safe to use, do not currently exist for the treatment of violent cancers.
According to the results of the study, the use of an antiviral drug originally intended for AIDS patients, together with a drug that is in clinical development to treat memory loss, has led to an anti-cancer response against liver cancer and skin cancer. The discovery showed that a combination of the two led to an effective response and that each of the drugs alone had no effect on the cancer cells at all. "This is a combination that is not between anti-cancer drugs, but between drugs that were not thought to work at all on cancer," explains Prof. Tirosh. The uniqueness of the findings was that the mechanism of action of the drug combination involved the confinement of key proteins in the development of cancer within the cell, and the prevention of their presentation across the cell membrane. This phenomenon has not been reported before and may be an alternative therapeutic approach to the use of responses known as kinase inhibitors (important proteins in the body that regulate the way cells grow and divide), which have severe side effects and the development of cancer resistance to treatments.
As a model to test the effectiveness of the treatment, the researchers used cancer cells from a liver source and melanoma skin cancer, both violent cancers with low survival rates. In both cases the drug combination showed significant efficacy to the point of complete disappearance of the tumor in laboratory animals. In the future, if the drug is approved for use in humans, it may save the patient the harsh chemotherapy treatments. "The findings were very surprising," said Prof. Tirosh. "Protein confinement within the cell is usually achieved by highly toxic substances. In this case, it was done by a safe drug combination for use that showed a specific anti-cancer effect. This approach would make it very difficult for tumors to develop resistance and could be a clinical breakthrough."
Despite the great joy in Prof. Tirosh's laboratory at the Hebrew University, it will take another years before the drug becomes useful and available to cancer patients. "Despite the scientific breakthrough we have 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.
To read the scientific article:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15067-5
