Cancer cell int: a new strategy for the treatment of triple negative breast cancer

February 24, 2019 / BIOON / - researchers from the University of North Carolina (UNC) comprehensive cancer research center have found a new way to attack malignant breast cancer By working with a drug development company, the researchers hope that their laboratory findings can be translated into a new combination therapy for clinical use in the future Photo source: cancer cell International's latest discovery was recently published in cancer cell international The research is based on Leslie, Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, School of medicine, and Professor, comprehensive cancer research center, Unc Prior to Dr parise's work, the laboratory has been studying a potential new drug target for triple negative breast cancer Dr parise also co founded a company called reveris therapeutics, which is trying to develop drugs to selectively target and inhibit a protein in cells called cib1 "Our goal is to develop a new combination therapy to maintain cancer cell killing selectivity and overcome chemotherapy resistance in triple negative breast cancer." Said parise "We believe that targeting cib1 is an exciting, safe and tolerable combination approach." Parise's lab has previously discovered the potential of cib1 as a drug target, and their research has found that when they knock out the protein using genetic engineering, they can kill cancer cells and delay tumor growth in mouse models Their latest study reveals the role of cib1, as well as a synergistic combination strategy Alexander h Chung, a Ph.D student in the Pharmaceutical Department of UNC Medical College, said they believed that the protein involved in regulating a signaling pathway called apoptosis and other pathways in cells, which lead to cell self destruction "We already know that cib1 is important for cancer cell survival, but we want to know why." Said Chung "We believe it is also helping cancer cells avoid self destruction through other cell death pathways, not just non apoptosis When we removed cib1 from cancer cells, we found apoptosis and other non apoptotic forms of death The researchers explored what happens when breast cancer is treated with docetaxel and cib1 knockout They found that the combination therapy can selectively kill cancer cells without affecting normal cells In addition, the addition of a death signal molecule, TNF related apoptosis inducing ligand (or trail), has synergistic effect, which will lead to increased cell death, but will not kill normal cells "When we added trail to induce apoptosis and knock out cib1, we found that more cancer cells self destructed." Said Chung Their findings will have an important impact on the treatment of breast cancer, because when cells close the signal pathway of apoptosis, they usually develop resistance to chemotherapy "Because one mechanism of chemoresistance is through the defect of apoptotic signal, inducing non apoptotic cell death is an effective treatment strategy." Said Chung "We are very excited to find that our method can induce apoptosis and non apoptosis of drug-resistant and non drug resistant cancer cells without affecting normal cells We hope to see this result applied in clinical practice We want to quickly develop cib1 targeted drugs and test them with docetaxel or the next generation of trail Toxicity is the biggest challenge in the treatment of triple negative breast cancer We found that by using this combination therapy, we can enhance the selectivity of killing cancer cells and reduce the dose of chemotherapy drugs needed " Reference: Alexander h Chung et al Cib1 completion with docetaxel or trail enhancements triple negative burst cancer cell death, cancer cell International (2019) Doi: 10.1186/s12935-019-0740-2