A cancer expert at the University was part of a team to discover a possible new path to reducing multi-drug resistance in cancer cells.
Professor Martin Michaelis, of the School of Biosciences and its Centre for Molecular Processing, worked with international colleagues in research on the drug Enzastaurin, which is currently under clinical investigation as an anti-cancer treatment.
It is expected that the discovery will lead to future opportunities to develop new strategies to reduce common mechanisms of defence against anti-cancer drugs in cancer cells.
The team discovered that Enzastaurin, known to inhibit the protein kinase beta – which contributes to cancer cell aggressiveness – also inhibits ABCB1 (P-glycoprotein), which has been found to trigger multi-drug resistance in cancer cells.
The research centred on the way resistance is formed in cancer cells, which leads to the phenomena whereby anti-cancer drugs work initially but then become less effective, resulting in the return of the cancer.
The P-glycoprotein ABCB1 is what is known as an ‘efflux pump’ that transports many different anti-cancer drugs out of cells. Professor Michaelis and the team found that Enzastaurin effectively inhibits this transporting process.
The research, entitled Enzastaurin inhibits ABCB1-mediated drug efflux independently of effects on protein kinase C signalling and the cellular p53 status is published in the journal Oncotarget. As well as Professor Martin Michaelis, Mohsen Sharifi and Dr Taravat Ghafourian of the University’s Medway School of Pharmacy took part in the research. The other members of the team were Florian Rothweiler, Nadine Löschmann and Jindrich Cinatl Jr of the Klinikum der Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.