Therapeutic target to treat glioblastoma and lung cancer

María Blasco

CNIO, Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas, Spain

In most lung cancer patients, the diagnosis is made when the disease is advanced. There are currently no effective treatments, and the incidence is expected to increase over the next 10 years. Glioblastoma, meanwhile, is a highly aggressive brain cancer for which there is no effective therapy and life expectancy does not exceed 14 months. Moreover, no substantial progress has been made in combating it in recent decades. There is a social need to look for emerging therapies to attack these cancers. Our project proposes a new therapeutic alternative inducing telomeric DNA damage (a way to induce cell aging) through the Telomere Repeat Binding Factor 1 (TRF1) protein, an essential protector of telomere integrity.

The aim is to develop an anti-carcinogenic drug directed against the TRF1 protein, a new therapeutic target, which will enable progress to be made in an effective therapy against glioblastoma and lung cancer. Since most tumors (85-90%) have telomerase activity, inducing telomere DNA damage is presented as a pioneering therapy in the development of cancer drugs. The development of this new drug seeks to inhibit the TRF1 protein, an essential protector of telomere integrity, which will selectively and effectively eliminate tumor cells.