Drug may be breakthrough to treat lung cancer

The development of a drug to treat the most common type of lung cancer is a step closer, thanks to research from PhD student, Mohamed Saad, and laboratory head, Professor Brendan Jenkins, at Hudson Institute. The breakthrough to potential treatment for lung adenocarcinoma has been the discovery of how to inhibit the cancer-causing gene, KRAS.

Scientists already recognised KRAS is a common cause of lung adenocarcinoma, because when this gene mutates unexpectedly – in about one third of lung cancer cases – it can lead to the development and spread of cancer cells. What they didn’t know was that an enzyme, ADAM17, could directly impact on KRAS and its ability to control proliferation of lung cancer cells. The discovery of this relationship has opened a pathway to an effective treatment in KRAS mutant lung cancers.

Now, research, published in EMBO Molecular Medicine, has shown how a drug targeting ADAM17, and thus indirectly inhibiting the role of KRAS, could provide effective treatment for lung cancer patients. The drug supresses the mutant KRAS gene’s ability to spread cancer cells in the lung. The drug is being developed at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, with support from Kiel University in Germany, while its effectiveness is being tested at Hudson Institute.

Next steps

The Hudson Institute-led team will now explore the development of this drug, in collaboration with colleagues in Israel and Germany, as a new therapy in human lung adenocarcinoma patients. They hope to provide patients with more treatment options.