Researchers from the Hebrew University tested combinations of drugs approved for clinical use, for the treatment of liver cancer and skin cancer. The study revealed a unique effect of a combination of an antiviral drug and a drug for aging diseases that led to an anti-cancer response, which led to the creation of a drug that has been shown to be effective in laboratory animals against active disease. The discovery may serve as a basis for more effective treatment of many common types of cancer
Prof. Boaz Tirosh, a lecturer and researcher from the School of Pharmacy in the Faculty of Medicine of the Hebrew University, has been researching the cellular response to damage to the folding of proteins in the cell for over two decades. Now he faces a scientific breakthrough in cancer research. As part of a three-year study in collaboration with researchers in Germany and the USA and which was published in the prestigious scientific magazine Nature Communication, Prof. Tirosh and his research students led by Dr. Mohamed Mahamid examined the movement of intracellular proteins in cancer under different drug combinations. During their test, the researchers managed to reach a unique medicinal combination between two types of drugs - a combination that has been proven to be effective against liver cancer and skin cancer in mice, and in the next step it is expected to move to the stage of clinical trials. This breakthrough may also lead to a change in the approach towards researching these types of cancer.
In order to achieve an increased effect for eradicating cancer cells, anticancer drugs that work by different mechanisms are usually combined. This approach increases the effectiveness of the treatment but also its side effects. However, combinations between drugs, where each one alone is non-toxic but safe to use, do not currently exist for the treatment of aggressive cancers.
According to the results of the study, it became clear that the use of an antiviral drug originally intended for AIDS patients, along with a drug that is in clinical development for the treatment of memory loss, 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. "It is a combination that is not between anti-cancer drugs, but between drugs that were never thought to work on cancer," explains Prof. Tirosh. The uniqueness of the finding was that the mechanism of action of the drug combination involved the confinement of key proteins in the development of cancer inside the cell, and the prevention of their presentation on the surface of the cell membrane. This phenomenon has not been reported before and can be an alternative therapeutic approach to the use of reactions known as kinase inhibitors (important proteins in the body that regulate the way cells grow and divide), which have severe side effects as well as the development of cancer resistance to treatments.
As a model to examine the effectiveness of the treatment, the researchers used cancer cells from the liver and melanoma skin cancer, both aggressive types of cancer with low survival rates. In both cases the medicinal combination showed significant effectiveness 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 from the difficult chemotherapy treatments. "The findings were very surprising", concludes Prof. Tirosh. "Entrapment of proteins inside the cell is usually achieved by very toxic substances. In this case, this happened by a safe-to-use drug combination that showed a specific anti-cancer effect. This approach will 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 more years until the drug becomes 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 definitely shows the feasibility", Prof. Tirosh concludes.
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Have you become a yellow press?
The title "A drug that will defeat skin and liver cancer without chemotherapy" while the research itself has been proven, meanwhile on mice, and as we know in the fields of medicine there is a huge gulf between what is successful on laboratory animals and what is beneficial to people. So the professor definitely deserves a lot of strength. Tirosh who "*faces a *scientific breakthrough in cancer research" and his assistants, but bye.
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