A New Strategy to Overcome Resistance to Cancer Treatment

Alfonso Calvo.

Universidad de Navarra, Spain.

Many aggressive cancers, including lung, breast, head and neck, bladder, gastric and oesophageal cancers, develop resistance to existing therapies. To address this challenge, this project aims to develop a novel targeted protein-degradation strategy that removes a key cancer-driving protein from cancer cells.

The team has created first-in-class compounds based on PROTAC technology. These molecules selectively recruit the target protein for destruction inside cancer cells, triggering extensive tumour-cell death. In contrast to existing treatments that simply block protein activity, this new strategy eliminates the protein completely. This approach may therefore produce stronger and durable responses and overcome resistance mechanisms.

If the compounds reach clinical development, they could offer new treatment options for people with hard-to-treat solid tumours while also enhancing the effectiveness of existing cancer therapies, including immunotherapies. This approach could represent a promising new avenue in precision oncology with broad applications across several high-incidence cancers.

STAGE 1