Cancer has a powerful new enemy — and it is fueled by a 9-year-old girl with an unforgettable smile.
Researchers have developed a drug containing a molecule called AOH1996 that “appears to annihilate all solid tumors” in preclinical research — while leaving healthy cells unharmed.
The drug AOH1996 is named after Anna Olivia Healey, a cancer patient from Indiana who was born in 1996.
“I knew I wanted to do something special for that little girl,” Linda Malkas of City of Hope in Duarte, California, a leading cancer research center, said in a statement received by The Post.
“She died when she was only 9 years old from neuroblastoma, a children’s cancer that affects only 600 kids in America each year.”
Malkas met Anna’s family just before their little girl died in 2005 after a devastating battle with the cancer. Neuroblastoma starts in very early forms of nerve cells, most often found in an embryo or a fetus, according to the American Cancer Society.
“I met Anna’s father when she was at her end stages … he asked if I could do something about neuroblastoma and he wrote my lab a check for $25,000,” she said. “That was the moment that changed my life — my fork in the road.”
AOH1996 represents the culmination of two decades of research for Malkas and City of Hope.
The new drug works by targeting a protein called PCNA, or proliferating cell nuclear antigen. In its mutated form, PCNA helps cancerous tumors thrive and grow.
“PCNA is uniquely altered in cancer cells, and this fact allowed us to design a drug that targeted only the form of PCNA in cancer cells” while leaving healthy, normal cells untouched, Malkas, 68, said. --->READ MORE HERE
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Scientists at a leading US hospital have developed a “cancer-killing pill” that kills solid tumours through “targeted chemotherapy.”
Likened to a “snowstorm that closes a key airline hub, shutting down all flights in and out only in planes carrying cancer cells”, the protein was developed by a research team at the City of Hope, one of the largest cancer research and treatment organisations in the US.
The AOH1996 molecule works by targeting a cancerous variant of PCNA, a protein critical to DNA replication and repair of enlarging tumours.
Developed over the last two decades, it has shown to be effective in preclinical research treating breast, prostate, brain, ovarian, cervical, skin and lung cancers.
The study, published in the journal Cell Chemical Biology, tested the protein across over 70 cancer cell lines. The results noted that AOH1996 selectively killed cancer cells by “disrupting the normal cell reproductive cycle”, with the next stage aiming to further the clinical trial in humans.
"PCNA is like a major airline terminal hub containing multiple plane gates. Data suggests PCNA is uniquely altered in cancer cells, and this fact allowed us to design a drug that targeted only the form of PCNA in cancer cells”, said Linda Malkas, Ph.D., professor in City of Hope’s Department of Molecular Diagnostics and Experimental Therapeutics and the M.T. & B.A. Ahmadinia Professor in Molecular Oncology.
“Our cancer-killing pill is like a snowstorm that closes a key airline hub, shutting down all flights in and out only in planes carrying cancer cells.
"Results have been promising. AOH1996 can suppress tumour growth as a monotherapy or combination treatment in cell and animal models without resulting in toxicity. The investigational chemotherapeutic is currently in a Phase 1 clinical trial in humans at City of Hope." --->READ MORE HERE
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