Researchers at the Brain Tumour Research Centre of Excellence at Imperial College London have discovered a drug that could boost the effectiveness of chemotherapy to treat glioblastoma (GBM), the most commonly diagnosed aggressive brain tumour affecting adults.
Scientists funded by Brain Tumour Research, used a drug called FK866, or daporinad, to block production of a chemical called NAD, which gives cancer cells high levels of energy they need to grow quickly. The team discovered FK866 boosted effectiveness of the chemotherapy drug temozolomide in both tumour cells in the lab and in mouse models.
Around 3,200 people in the UK are diagnosed with a glioblastoma (GBM) every year, and will have surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, or a combination of these, as treatments. One of the chemotherapy drugs used to treat GBM is temozolomide. But people live, on average, for just 12-18 months after they are diagnosed and treatments have not changed in 20 years.
Dr Richard Perryman, lead author on the study alongside Dr Nelofer Syed, said: “Our previous work in ovarian cancer suggested targeting NAD could be a new way to kill cancer cells, so we wanted to see if it did the same for brain cancer. But blocking NAD alone may not be enough; ideally, we want to improve the effectiveness of the treatment that patients with GBM already receive.
“We are really excited to discover FK866 could boost temozolomide’s effects and that it reduced the size of brain tumours in mice. We are now generating more data that could lead to an early phase clinical trial. We hope this early stage work paves the way for clinical trials that, if successful, could become another weapon in an oncologist’s armoury to treat people with GBM.”
Dr Perryman in the lab
Dr Karen Noble, our Director of Research, Policy and Innovation, said: “We are delighted to see this early-stage research from the Imperial team being published that could ultimately become a new way to boost existing treatments for people with a particular type of GBM. We urgently need to discover new and better treatments to offer hope to people affected by GBM. Early-stage research like this is crucial to discover new treatments and to give people with glioblastoma more options. They deserve a better outlook than they have right now.”
The study is published in the journal Cancers.
This breakthrough would not have been possible without your support. To find out how you can help to fund early-stage research like this which could lead to the discovery of urgently needed new and improved treatments, click here.
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Published Friday 16th August 2024.