A collaborative research involving scientists from University of Mysore and their counterparts in Singapore and China claims to have developed a potent compound that could be critical in the fight against cancer.
The newly-discovered compound has been patented and the scientists were hoping that it may soon progress to the decisive clinical trials. The research work has been published recently in the American journal, ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)’.
The research work in University of Mysore was headed by K.S. Rangappa, Distinguished Professor, who collaborated with National University of Singapore, and Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, China
Prof. Rangappa said the team synthesised a novel compound that could delay the development of resistance to other therapeutic agents. This, he says, has the potential of “acting against a wide range of cancers” as a “single agent”.
“The newly-synthesised compound has the potential of decreasing the possibility of breast, endometrial, prostrate, ovary, liver, colon and pancreatic cancer cells. The anti-cancer activity of this compound has been successfully validated through various standard methods,” explains Prof. Rangappa, who lead a team comprising Basappa, Mohan C.D., Shobith R. and K.S. Girish in Mysuru University.
Their investigation takes root in the problems associated with current cancer treatments, including surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy and immunotherapy. Some are expensive or lead to adverse effects, while surgery and radiation were often ineffective against metastatic cancers.
The team honed in on ‘BAD’ (Bcl-2-associated death promoter), a protein essential for driving the cancer cells to death through cheminformatics platform (computer-based identification). A compound called NPB was identified as a potential lead compound.
“Cancer cells oppose their death by putting across increased concentration of proteins called Bcl-2. When we treat cancer cells with our newly-discovered compound, it restrains Bcl-2 protein by interacting with it. The inactivation of Bcl-2 results in the initiation of death signals to the cell,” explains Prof Rangappa, who is the former vice-chancellor of University of Mysore and Karnataka State Open University (KSOU).
He believes the compound may not affect normal cells as the BAD protein was either absent or in lower amounts. “This is the uniqueness of our compound,” he says.
The models have been validated in mice cancer models without significantly affecting major organs during the pre-clinical studies carried out in the laboratory here. “The next stage of research - clinical trials on humans – was expected to start soon at Shenzhen in China and the outcome may be known in a year or two,” says Prof. Rangappa.
