Keeping the pressure on in the second half: Shape-shifting cancer treatments designed to prevent drug-resistance

For many cancer patients, treatment feels like a cruel game of two halves: the therapy works well initially, only for the disease to launch a counterattack, often emerging stronger and more widespread. This recurrence has been traced to specific enzymes that introduce mutations which protect cancer cells. Inhibitors for these specific enzymes do exist, but targeting multiple enzymes at once has proved difficult with conventional drugs. 

Professor Filichev has received a Marsden Fund Standard grant to design a flexible molecule that can adopt different conformations. This shape-shifting ability should allow the drug to disable two target enzymes that have been shown to cause mutations that lead to drug-resistance.

With researchers from Massey University, and international collaborators in Australia and the United States of America, Professor Filichev aims to help other cancer therapies work for longer and more effectively, promoting remission for patients, and improving survival rates and quality of life. The ability to create this type of shape-shifting molecule also represents a platform for designing a new generation of drugs with diverse applications, which could create commercial opportunities and attract global investment to our growing biotechnology industry.

Professor Vyacheslav Filichev (left) and Dr Harikrishnan Kurup (right, post-doctoral fellow) in the chemistry laboratory (photo credit: David Wiltshire, Massey University)