A combination of two drugs was capable of suppressing tumors in a non-conventional manner. Instead of inhibiting tumor cell division, as the most widely used medications do, the strategy consisted of hyperactivating oncogenic signaling by these cells to the point where they became stressed. The other drug then attacked the stressed cells.
The approach will be tested in colorectal cancer patients in the Netherlands later this year. The study is reported in an article published in Cancer Discovery . The first author is Matheus Henrique Dias, a Brazilian who is currently a senior postdoctoral fellow at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI).
The idea began to develop while Dias was doing postdoctoral research at Butantan Institute in São Paulo, Brazil, and an internship at the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom. The project was conducted under the aegis of the Center for Research on Toxins, Immune Response and Cell Signaling (CeTICS), a Research, Innovation and Dissemination Center (RIDC) funded by FAPESP. Back then, we discovered that a gene known as fibroblast growth factor 2 [ FGF2 ] inhibited multiplication of tumor cells instead of stimulating it, as it did in the case of healthy cells.
This was a surprise since it was the opposite of what should happen," Matheus Henrique Dias, Study First Author, Postdoctoral Researcher, Butantan Institute, São Paulo At the time, a study on the role of FGF2 was published in the journal Molecular Oncology . In this latest pap.