The 91视频 College of Pharmacy is helping develop a new approach to fight aggressive triple-negative breast cancer.
A 91视频 College of Pharmacy researcher has joined a $3.2 million effort to develop a promising new treatment for triple-negative breast cancer, one of the most aggressive and difficult-to-treat forms of the disease, accounting for 10-15% of all breast cancer cases.
Wei Wang, UH research associate professor, is part of a team lead by Wei Li, director of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Pharmacy鈥檚 Drug Discovery Center. The team is developing a new kind of drug designed to attack MDM2, a cancer-driving protein often found at high levels in triple-negative breast cancer and has been linked to faster tumor growth and worse outcomes for patients.
In the world of breast cancer, the kind termed 鈥榯riple-negative鈥� dangerously lives up to its name 鈥� it grows aggressively, is more likely to have spread by the time it鈥檚 discovered and will commonly return after treatment. Still, the name triple-negative means something else, referring to tumors that test negative for estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors and excess HER2 protein. Because TNBC lacks specific targets, it is mostly managed by general chemotherapy.
鈥淭he existing chemotherapeutic drugs often have significant side effects and/or develop acquired drug resistance,鈥� said Wang, who has received $1.7 million to support the work of the team in fighting MDM2.
Researchers on Li鈥檚 team have discovered a compound that can break down MDM2 directly, stopping it at the source. In early laboratory models, this new compound has already shown the ability to shrink tumors, offering hope for a more effective treatment.
鈥淭his work could lead to an entirely new class of therapies for triple-negative breast cancer,鈥� Li said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e hopeful that by directly removing the MDM2 protein from cancer cells, we can help more patients respond to treatment regardless of their tumor type.鈥�
The chemistry and drug design work is being led by the team at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. At UH, Wang is joined by Ruiwen Zhang, professor of pharmacology and toxicology, and will focus on understanding how the treatment works and evaluating its effectiveness in models that closely mirror human disease.
Wang said, 鈥淲e will study how the drug targets MDM2 and evaluate the most promising drug candidates to determine effective dosing, understand how the drug behaves in the body, compare it with existing treatments and assess early safety.鈥�
鈥淭ogether, these studies are designed to help move this potential therapy closer to clinical development for patients who urgently need better options.鈥�