How a new drug could fight childhood tumours

When it comes to childhood cancer, finding treatments that are both effective and gentle is crucial.

Current treatments like chemotherapy and radiation can leave lasting side effects. We need options that can attack cancer cells without harming healthy cells – ‘targeted treatments’.

Thanks to a New Ideas Grant from The Little Princess Trust (LPT), Dr Igor Vivanco and his team at King’s College London are able to test a new medicine that fights cancer in a new and unique way.

Igor’s team is investigating a medicine that targets cancer cells specifically. Some cancers produce high levels of a protein known as a ‘growth factor,’ which helps them grow and thrive.

This protein attaches to a receptor on cancer cells and causes them to grow more. Igor has discovered a medicine that forces this receptor to move to the wrong place inside cancer cells, which then kills the cell.

This could be moved into a clinical trial more easily than if it was a completely new drug.

Igor explained: “Precision medicine has played a big role in managing adult cancers.  Unfortunately, it has been less useful in treating children.

"Traditional chemotherapies and radiotherapy regimens are common and sadly carry significant long-lasting side effects.

"Therefore, we need new ways to target the unique features of cancer with treatment.  This project explores that possibility.

“We hope to understand how a drug that disrupts the cell’s ability to distribute proteins to their correct place within the cell can actually kill cancer cells. 

"Since this drug has already proven to be safe in adults, this could be moved into a clinical trial more easily than if it was a completely new drug.”

One of the most exciting parts of this project is that the medicine appears to work across all types of cancer cells with high levels of the growth factor. Igor is optimistic about the potential of this new approach.

“The drug we are studying has the potential to benefit patients whose tumours feature a higher-than-normal amount of a specific growth factor," he said.

"But, it also provides evidence that cancer cells can be selectively eliminated using similar drugs. This might open a new direction in paediatric cancer drug development.”

This project could make a huge difference for children with cancer. If Igor and his team can fully understand how the drug works, they hope to move into clinical trials within the next five years.

Because the drug could work across various cancer types, it could help lots of children who currently have limited treatment options.

Igor added: “I feel honoured and privileged to have been given the opportunity to explore this idea.

"I wholeheartedly believe it has the potential to make a difference in paediatric oncology, both in the short term and hopefully in the long term as well.”

Find out more about Igor’s project here.