By
Jeremy Duda
Arizona Daily Wildcat
$6 mil grant for creation of alternative to chemotherapy
The negative side effects associated with chemotherapy may not be a concern for cancer patients in the future.
Dr. Garth Powis of the Arizona Cancer Center received a $6 million grant for the development of new cancer fighting drugs.
The five-year Novel Cancer Drug Discovery Grant is from the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md. The grant will be used to develop drugs that have the benefits of current cancer treatments without their negative side effects.
"We are entering an era now where technology has opened the door for us to identify anti-cancer drugs that specifically target cancer cells, leaving healthy cells untouched," said Powis, a University of Arizona professor of pathology and director of basic research at the center.
Drugs used for chemotherapy - a common cancer treatment - are designed to target cells that are rapidly dividing. Along with cancerous cells, this includes healthy cells that line the gastrointestinal tract, hair follicles and those produced in bone marrow.
This leads to many of the side effects that cancer patients suffer from, such as nausea, vomiting, decreased blood cell count and hair loss.
Cancer is also spread by metastasis, the spread of cancerous cells throughout the circulatory system to other parts of the body, although this is not the focus of the study.
The new compounds under development are known as anti-signaling drugs. They interfere with the signals being sent within cancerous cells that tell them to grow. This causes them to slow the reproduction of cells, as opposed to drugs which are currently in use, which slow down all rapidly-dividing cells.
"A cancer cell is like a car going too fast down the highway," Powis said. "We're trying to control the gas pedal instead of throwing a wrench in the engine."
The new agents being developed will also differ from their current counterparts because they are not being developed in respect to certain types of cancer. Instead, cancerous cells will be targeted by their genetic nature, Powis said.
"This is a tremendous opportunity to develop drugs that have general utility for treating cancer," said Laurence Hurley, a professor of medicinal chemistry at the Arizona Cancer Center.
These grants usually involve several parties, including other academic institutions and pharmaceutical companies, who will manufacture the drugs when the research is complete. Powis said the goal is to have the government, the industrial sector and academia working together to help patients.
The companies involved provide some money toward the grants, Powis said. ProlX, a pharmaceutical company in Pittsburgh which will be doing preclinical development of the drug, has a licensing agreement with the University of Arizona to manufacture it when the research is complete.
About half of this grant will go to the Duke University Medical Center and the University of Pittsburgh.
