Drug may avert chemo side effects

The new drug will be tested on patients with lymphoma and leukaemia. Photo: Phil Carrick

MELBOURNE scientists believe they have found a new treatment for blood cancers that will spare patients the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy.

The new drug, which has shown promising results in mice, will be tested on patients with lymphoma and leukaemia at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre later this year.

In a career-defining breakthrough, Associate Professor Ross Hannan from the hospital found a weakness in cancer cells that could be targeted to kill them while sparing healthy cells.

The weakness is a process called ribosome biogenesis, which produces proteins essential for the growth and survival of all cells.

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''We've demonstrated that cancer cells are far more dependent on their ability to make ribosomes than normal cells, and therefore, much more vulnerable if these ''protein factories" come under attack,'' he said of the research published yesterday in the journal Cancer Cell.

After working with an American pharmaceutical company, Professor Hannam and his colleagues found a drug that could target this process, killing the cancer cells in mice with little impact on healthy cells.

Professor Grant McArthur, co-head of the Cancer Therapeutics Program at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, said the drug seemed to work best for blood cancers in mice, boosting hopes for its use in humans, who often suffer unpleasant side effects from current treatments.

''This will hopefully lead to the eradication of lymphoma and leukaemia cells in patients, but we'll have to wait and see how the trials go,'' he said.

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Drug may avert chemo side effects