Could a new drug offer a major breakthrough when it comes to treating ovarian cancer? Scientists are hopeful that a new drug could decrease the number of doses that patients need to take and help in the treatment of patients whose cancer has become drug-resistant.
What is this new ‘miracle’ drug? The drug is known as ‘PACMA’ and is a member of a class of cytotoxic agents. It was discovered by testing 10,000 different chemical compounds on cancer cells at the University of Southern California School of Pharmacy.
The drug, which has been tested on ovarian cancer cells and on tumours present in mice was unveiled recently in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and it is believed that this drug could be revolutionary when it comes to treating ovarian cancer.
“We need a new generation of drugs. We need to overcome the drug-resistance issue,” said Shili Xu, a USC graduate student and the lead author of the study.
Researchers believe that this new drug could be revolutionary when it comes to treating ovarian cancer.
In the paper, Xu and his co-authors reported that the drug PACMA us a potent inhibitor of a protein called Protein Disulfide Isomerase (PDI), a protein that is apparent in ovarian cancer.
The new drug can be taken orally and it grows within cancer cells, helping to destroy them from the inside out – because of this, it is not likely to cause harmful side effects in other parts of the body. The drug is “irreversible” meaning that once it latches onto a cancer cell, it won’t leave the body until the cell has been destroyed.
As it stands, the drug still requires some additional testing, but so far the effects of it are being described as ground-breaking and the researchers hope that it may also have the potential for treating other types of cancer.
