New drug ‘STOPS the deadliest form of skin cancer spreading’ – and could save thousands of lives
A POTENTIAL new drug reduces the spread of the deadliest form of skin cancer by up to 90 per cent, experts have revealed.
The chemical compound slows melanoma tumours, shutting down the disease’s ability to grow.
Experts say it works by targeting a key gene that is vital to a tumour spreading.
Until now, few other compounds have been able to achieve the feat.
Professor Richard Neubig, from Michigan State University, said the compound blocks the gene’s ability to produce RNA molecules and certain proteins in melanoma tumours.
He said if the disease is caught early, the chance a patient will die is just two per cent.
If caught in the later stages, that figure rises to 84 per cent.
“The majority of people die from melanoma because of the disease spreading,” he said.
“Our compounds can block cancer migration and potentially increase patient survival.
“It’s been a challenge developing small-molecule drugs that can block this gene activity that works as a signalling mechanism known to be important in melanoma progression.
The majority of people die from melanoma because of the disease spreading. Our compounds can block cancer migration and potentially increase patient survival
Professor Richard Neubig
“Our chemical compound is actually the same one that we’ve been working on to potentially treat the disease scleroderma, which now we’ve found works effectively on this type of cancer.”
Scleroderma is a rare and often fatal autoimmune disease that causes the hardening of skin tissue, as well as organs such as the lungs, heart and kidneys.
The same mechanisms that produce the skin thickening in this disease, also help the spread of cancer.
Co-author of the new study, Kate Appleton, a postdoctoral student, said the findings though an early discovery, could be highly effective in battling deadly skin cancer.
Around 14,500 cases of melanoma are diagnosed in the UK each year.
In the US around 10,000 people lose their lives to the disease every year.
Ms Appleton said: “Melanoma is the most dangerous form of skin cancer with around 76,000 new cases a year in the US.
“One reason the disease is so fatal is that it can spread throughout the body very quickly and attack distant organs such as the brain and lungs.”
The researchers found their compound stopped the spread of melanoma cells by 85 to 90 per cent.
And they discovered the potential drug greatly reduced the risk of the disease spreading to the lungs of mice that had been injected with human melanoma cells.
Ms Appleton said an important next step in their research is to identify which melanoma patients have the key pathway that the drug is able to target.
By doing so they will be able to determine who can benefit most.
“The effect of our compounds on turning off this melanoma cell growth and progression is much stronger when the pathway is activated,” she explained.
The findings are published in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.
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