Study reveals the drug, 5-fluorouracil, acts differently in different types of cancer — a finding that could help researchers design better drug combinations. Since the 1950s, a chemotherapy drug known as 5-fluorouracil has been used to treat many types of cancer, including blood cancers and cancers of the digestive tract. Doctors have long believed that this drug works by damaging the building blocks of DNA.
However, a new study from MIT has found that in cancers of the colon and other gastrointestinal cancers, it actually kills cells by interfering with RNA synthesis. The findings could have a significant effect on how doctors treat many cancer patients. Usually, 5-fluorouracil is given in combination with chemotherapy drugs that damage DNA, but the new study found that for colon cancer, this combination does not achieve the synergistic effects that were hoped for.
Instead, combining 5-FU with drugs that affect RNA synthesis could make it more effective in patients with GI cancers, the researchers say. Our work is the most definitive study to date showing that RNA incorporation of the drug, leading to an RNA damage response, is responsible for how the drug works in GI cancers. Textbooks implicate the DNA effects of the drug as the mechanism in all cancer types, but our data shows that RNA damage is what's really important for the types of tumors, like GI cancers, where the drug is used clinically.
" Michael Yaffe, a David H. Koch Professor of Science at MIT, the director o.
