New target to fight breast cancer

Isabelle Vernós

Centre de Regulació Genòmica (CRG), Barcelona, Spain

Despite significant advances in detection and treatment, breast cancer remains the most common and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women worldwide. Currently available treatments include surgery, radiotherapy and systemic therapies, which often produce toxicity and lead to resistance, highlighting the urgent need to develop new therapeutic agents.

This project proposes the validation of a specific protein, the polyglutamylase enzyme TTLL11, as a new target for developing drugs to enhance the arsenal of therapies currently available to combat breast cancer.

In previous studies, the team has discovered that the levels of this enzyme are reduced in cancer cells, but that the cells nonetheless appear to require minimum levels of enzyme activity to ensure cell survival. Thus they propose its complete inhibition as a means to combat this type of tumour. The project will validate this new approach which, in principle, should not pose toxicity issues or trigger resistance mechanisms, and could also be combined with other treatments.

Targeting microtubule polyglutamylation for cancer therapy

Stage 1