New horizons for cancer therapies
Tuesday November 18th, 2008
By Leigh Parry
A new era of 'intelligent' cancer drug development has led to more drugs reaching patients, says a study published in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.
Cancer Research UK scientists studied data on 974 cancer drugs in clinical development and found about 18 per cent would probably make it to market, as opposed to only about five per cent in previous years.
Molecularly targeted drugs called kinase inhibitors were almost three times more likely to reach patients than other types of anti-cancer drugs, the authors found.
Co-author Professor Herbie Newell, Cancer Research UK's director of translational research,said the findings highlighted the exciting era of cancer drug discovery.
"We strongly believe that both industry and academia must improve the availability of data related to failed as well as successful drug development programmes," Professor Newell said.
He said sharing such information would help measure progress and pinpoint areas for improvement.
The study coincided with an announcement from Cancer Research UK scientists at Cardiff University and Beatson Institute in Glasgow that they had discovered how bowel cancer can become aggressive.
In the study, published in Nature Genetics, researchers found that a tumour suppressor protein called Pten was critical in stopping tumours growing in mice.
The team found that when Pten became faulty, some of the tumours turned aggressive.
When Pten faults coincide with faults in another protein - APC - a kinase protein called AKT stimulates tumours to become aggressive and spread.
They identified AKT as a strong lead for drug development to target bowel cancer.
Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, November 14, 2008.doi:10.1038/nrd2758
Nature Genetics online, November 16, 2008. doi:10.1038/ng.256.
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