NF Research News Drug Discovery Initiative Grants Test New Approaches to NF2 Therapies
| Drug Discovery Initiative Grants Test New Approaches to NF2 Therapies |
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June 10, 2009: The Children’s Tumor Foundation has announced the funding of three new Drug Discovery Initiative Awards focused on identifying drug therapies for treatment of NF2 tumors. Two of these awards will support collaborations to test industry pipeline drugs from two biotechnology companies, an important advance in involving the the biotechnology industry in therapy development. The third grant will test new chemical entities. Dr. Andrea McClatchey (Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital) has teamed up with Waltham, MA based Avila Therapeutics to screen pan-ErbB inhibitors in NF2 tumor cells and mouse models. Pan-ErbB inhibitors target the growth factor receptor EGFR and related cell receptors. EGFR has been strongly implicated in NF2 tumor cell growth, and other EGFR-targeted drugs have shown potential efficacy in NF2 cells and mice, and are progressing to clinical trials. However with these existing drugs effects may be short-term or reversible. The twist with the Avila drugs is that they target other related cell receptors in addition to EGFR; and their effects could be less likely to be reversible, or to be longer lasting. This is a really important consideration for developing NF2 drug therapies because as the tumors of NF2 can continue growing throughout life, a safe chronic therapy will be required. Dr. Marco Giovannini (House Ear Institute) will screen drugs that target the cellular element hsp90 in mouse models of NF2 tumors; these drugs are provided by New York, NY based NexGenix Pharmaceuticals. Hsp90 is an important cell element in stabilizing tumor-promoting proteins, so by blocking this, potentially tumor growth can be halted. Hsp90 inhibitors have shown promise in a number of other tumor cell types. Finally, Dr. Joseph Kissil (The Wistar Institute) will screen newly created chemical entities to block p21-activated kinases (PAKs), a promising drug target for NF2 tumor treatment. Dr. Kissil will use an approach of chemical modification that allows tiny changes to be made to a promising drug to optimize its efficacy. |
