Document Tools

Scientists in SFU’s new medicinal chemistry research laboratory are developing novel drugs to help prevent osteoporosis and stop the survival of cancer cells.

Researchers in the lab, established in spring 2007, are already close to testing stages in both projects.

Robert Young, who holds the Merck Frosst-BC Leadership Chair in Pharmaceutical Genomics in Drug Discovery at SFU, is one of many scientists who are rapidly moving medicinal chemistry research in new directions.

Under his lead, two post-doctoral fellows are developing dual-action drugs for osteoporosis, marrying bone stimulators with bone resorption inhibitors. New Canadian Foundation of Innovation (CFI) funded equipment will help researchers measure how they are absorbed and released into the body.

Other lab researchers are using a newly acquired mass spectrometer to study a cell survival back-up plan that they suspect cancer cells may use to their benefit.

“There’s a process called apoptosis, where aberrant cells are induced to commit suicide,” Young explains. “This is a way the body can kill potential cancer cells before they get going.

“This primary process can be disabled and taken over. A lot of cancers will disable apoptosis to ensure cells never die. When this happens, the body can mount a secondary defense mechanism called autophagy, where cells literally eat themselves up.

“However it is thought that even this process can be used by clever cancer cells to survive."

Young says the autophagy process kicks in when cells are stressed, have poor oxygen, or can’t really work. Given time, autophagy will kill the cells but for a while, they can use the process, recycling bits of the cell to keep going.

“We have pretty good evidence that when cancer cells are under attack from anti-cancer drugs, or when tumors grow so fast they don’t have time to produce oxygen-carrying blood vessels, they can turn to autophagy to survive until the blood supply can be established.

“If you can inhibit autophagy at that time, you could synergize with cancer drugs and stop rapidly growing tumors. That’s the theory—the problem is, there are no drugs or agents to test that.

“On the other hand, if we could speed up autophagy we could kill off the cells faster. It’s really a double-edged sword.

“People have tried biological methods to test these theories, but what you really need is a drug. We’re trying to make both the stimulator and inhibitor of autophagy.”

The researchers are currently studying an autophagy-initiating enzyme known as ATG4B, hoping that a blocker of this key enzyme will give them the answer.

Comments