chemistry
june 2015
BY annie chang
CHEMICAL TECHNOLOGIES AND INNOVATIONS
10
How to Combat Cancer Growth?
Harness Its Own Protein-Degrading System!
There's a saying in the art of war: "Use the enemy's own strength against him." Scientists at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have devised a chemical technology that uses this strategy to combat cancer growth and to overcome drug resistance. The technology uses cancer cells' own protein-degrading machinery to break down cancer proteins. Conventional targeted therapies inhibit only a few of the functions of cancer proteins, so over time, resistance to a specific therapy arises as tumors manage to avoid the drug's effects by finding alternative routes for growth. Researchers at Dana-Farber wanted to find an approach that would disintegrate the target protein rather than merely disabling it. Thus, they aimed to chemically convert an inhibitor drug into a degrader drug.
To do so, they needed to manipulate the cell's natural system for protein degradation. Unneeded proteins are tagged with a protein called ubiquitin. Then proteins destined for death affixed with ubiquitin is sent to a structure called the proteasome, where they are destroyed and recycled. To utilize this system to destroy cancer proteins, the team at