Using self-assembled drugs to achieve breakthrough in cancer treatment

One of the most difficult aspects of cancer treatment is the wide variety of different tumors that can arise, each potentially requiring a different solution, as unfortunately not all drugs are right for everyone. In addition, another major problem with many current drugs is their low selectivity towards cancers, which leads to problems such as normal tissue toxicity, severe side effects and the development of drug resistance.

Now a team of scientists from the University of Huddersfield are studying how to tackle these challenges using “self-assembled” drugs and although research is in its very early stages, they have already made a breakthrough.

The science behind self-assembly

Self-assembly is the ability to instruct chemical systems with specific information so that, in the right environment, they spontaneously generate biologically active compounds. Using this method, many different compounds can be quickly and easily formed with each different self-assembled drug having different chemotherapy properties.

In the future, it may be possible to target many cancers using this approach with the right drug “self-assembled” so as to be selective for a specific cancer. “

Professor Craig Rice

In an article published by the journal Nature Communication, University Professor Roger Phillips, Dr. Simon Allison and Professor Craig Rice discuss chemical systems that self-assemble into molecular capsules that are highly toxic to human cancer cells from various tumor types.

More importantly, they show unprecedented cancer selectivity in the laboratory which in some cases are thousands of times more toxic to cancer cells than normal, healthy cells.

Cancer treatment without serious side effects

Ultimately, if similar results are obtained in more complex test systems, including in patients, and once considered safe after careful testing, this could offer the possibility of being able to treat cancers without the severe side effects commonly associated with it. chemotherapy drugs.

“The discovery and development of anti-cancer drugs can be extremely time-consuming and expensive, with a particular drug only effective against a relatively small number of cancers with specific common properties,” explained Professor Rice, who heads the department. of chemical sciences of the university and is also the Director of the Center for Structural, Molecular and Dynamic Modeling within the Faculty of Applied Sciences.

“In the future, it may be possible to target many cancers through this approach with the right drug ‘self-assembled’ so as to be selective for a specific cancer,” he said.

Target hard-to-treat cancers

Research could also pave the way for targeting difficult-to-treat cancers for which commonly used chemotherapy drugs have little or no effect.

Published studies show that the potential new drug can be assembled with zinc, copper or manganese, the three metal ions conferring significantly different chemotherapeutic properties via different mechanisms depending on the metal ion used.

“This is what enables the generation of different chemical systems, each of which may have specificity for different cancers,” he said.

Two different compounds were generated using zinc and manganese. Although these two compounds “look” very similar, the zinc compound has demonstrated excellent anticancer activity and. selectivity towards a range of cancers in the laboratory whereas the manganese compound was comparatively much more toxic, meaning there was more anticancer activity at a lower concentration, with similar selectivity compared to the current drugs tested.

Future studies will test whether this can be useful for cancers for which effective treatments are not currently available.

Prof Rice added that these studies represent the very early days of drug discovery and while the early results have been very promising, there will be many hurdles to overcome before the full clinical potential of this new discovery is realized. .