Cancer treatment targets diseased cells

Diseased cancer and tuberculosis cells to get improved delivery of therapeutic molecules

Researchers from Cardiff University’s Schools of pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences and biosciences said they wanted to improve the delivery of a relatively new class of drugs called biotherapeutics.

These drugs include antibodies such as Herceptin that target breast and stomach cancer cells.

Cancer cells often contain a unique protein on their surface that acts as a barcode to uniquely identifying these cells as cancerous against their healthy counterparts.

Published in the Nature publication Molecular Therapy the researchers describe experimenting with new ways of targeting breast cancer cells with Herceptin that interacts specifically with a barcode protein called Her2. This protein barcode is a major driver of cancer cell growth and division.

In the paper the researchers describe being able to manipulate how Herceptin interacts with Her2 which sits on the surface of some breast cancer cells. 

By modifying how Herceptin interacts with Her2, they show that Herceptin and Her2 were rapidly engulfed by the cancer cells that then proceeded to destroy the protein barcode. 

Lead author, Arwyn Jones, from the school of pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences, said this new approach for drug delivery, called receptor crosslinking, could be used to target a wide range of diseases.

Jones said: “The striking thing is that we have tested our approach on both Her2, as well as other barcode proteins, and each one gave the same result.

“It looks like this could be a universal strategy to increase the uptake of drugs into different kinds of cells involved in many types of diseases.”