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Recently, the research team of Professor Adam Bass of Harvard Medical School’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute published a paper in the academic journal Enterology (GUT), revealing the combination of CDK4/6 inhibitors and pan ERBB family inhibitors can effectively inhibit the growth of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.

Esophageal cancer is a common gastrointestinal tumor.

With the support of the "Cancer Genome Atlas Project (TCGA)", the Adam Bass team has been committed to the search, confirmation and treatment of new targets for esophageal cancer.

In the past few years, they have further carried out a number of experiments around the treatment plan of CDK4/6.

"Although'palbociclib' can significantly slow down the growth of tumors compared to the control group, the tumors continue to grow.

Next, they confirmed from data analysis that the growth of most squamous cancer cells is also dependent on epidermal growth factor protein (ERBBs).

Squamous cancer cell lines are more dependent on the epidermal growth factor family (ERBBs) (photo courtesy of the research team)

Therefore, the researchers combined the two drugs, the CDK4/6 inhibitor "palbociclib" and the pan-ERBBs inhibitor "afatinib".

In addition, they also explained the reasons why the combination therapy is effective.

The researchers hope that the application of this new combination drug strategy can be promoted as soon as possible, and it will provide new options for the clinical treatment of esophageal squamous cell cancer and benefit patients as soon as possible.

The first authors of this article are Dr.

Related paper information: org/10.