Scientists have developed a new drug that has the potential to strip cancer cells of their “immortality”, a finding that could help in treating patients suffering from one of the most aggressive forms of leukaemia.
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HXR9 Treatment:
- Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a type of cancer of the blood and bone marrow with excess immature white blood cells and is responsible for 265,000 worldwide cases each year.
- The drug candidate, called HXR9, works by preventing the cancer cells from sidestepping the natural process that causes unhealthy and damaged cells to die known as apoptosis.
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- “Acute myeloid leukaemia is a pretty intractable disease and doesn’t respond to many treatments. This is a novel therapeutic target that hasn’t been shown before to be effective against this form of leukaemia,” said Richard Morgan, Professor at the University of Bradford in the UK.
- The drug targets a particular family of genes, called HOX genes, which helps to give cancer cells the ability to continuously grow and divide.
- HXR9 was found to strip the cancer cells of this ability by turning off the HOX genes, Morgan said.
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According to a Study:
- In the study, published in the journal Oncotarget.
- The team analysed gene expression data from 269 AML patients.
- Found an association between the activity of a group of HOX genes and the patient survival rate.
- When HXR9 was tested on cancerous cells, they underwent a process known as necroptosis.
- Necroptosis causes the cells to explode and spew their contents into the bloodstream.
- Rather than simply digesting themselves as normally occurs in apoptosis.
- This increases the likelihood that there will be a subsequent immune reaction against the cancer cells, Morgan noted.
- In addition, HXR9 “could well be used in combination treatments but the initial trials will be as a single therapy”.
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