The effective treatment of cancer requires the ability to destroy cancerous cells. Nearly one third of all cancers today involve mutations of the Kras gene, which has proven resistant to existing cancer treatments. The current prognosis for patients with mutant-Kras cancers is poor because there is no effective treatment. However, recent analysis by Valerie Wells, of NYU London, and Livio Mallucci, of King’s College London, may present a new method to combat these untreatable cancers.
In a feature article in Drug Discovery Today, Mallucci and Wells discuss the current therapeutic strategies and their limitations and highlight a new way forward using the recombinant form of a physiological protein molecule, beta-GBP, which has proven to be effective against human Kras-driven tumors in animal models.
There are several significant aspects to their discovery. First, the beta-GBP molecule they have identified kills Kras mutant, and other cancer cells, by activating alternative routes to destroy cancer while leaving normal cells unharmed. Second, the beta-GBP molecule is naturally occurring in the body as a physiological molecule and therefore would avoid the complexity of current combinatorial therapies and the issues of drug resistance, toxicity and all side effects experienced with chemotherapy. Finally, translation of beta-GBP to the clinic, facilitated by its physiological nature, could open a new therapeutic opportunity representing a significant step forward in the treatment of cancers resistant to all current treatments.
The new research shows that mutant Kras, widely recognised as “undruggable,” yields to a treatment which, by impairing physiological processes rather than impairing targets, forces tumor cells to die while leaving normal cells unharmed.
“Few areas of scientific research can be as consequential and benevolent as those that help understand cancer and improve its treatment,” said NYU London Site Director Gary Slapper. “NYU London is exceptionally proud of the superb, path-cutting work of our faculty member Valerie Wells, and to be supporting her research. Innovative research, like Valerie’s with Livio Mallucci, is a key feature of university activity and a generator of world class teaching.”

• Read more: The end of KRAS, and other, cancers? A new way forward (subscription required)