Pan-cancer Assessment of Sensitivity Towards Novel Selective Oncogenic JNK Inhibitors
Background
Metastases account for over 65% of solid tumour associated deaths, with higher rates in cancers originating from the breasts, ovaries, colon and lungs.
While many ‘anti-metastatic’ drugs have been identified, these drugs often target the invasion of cancer cells, which in the majority of clinical scenarios has already occurred by the time most patients are diagnosed and treated.
This means that standard-of-care treatments for metastatic cancers continues to be limited to radiation and palliative systemic therapies. As such, there is both a need and an opportunity for the development of new strategies that prevent disease relapse, improve patient outcomes, and reduce cancer mortality by blocking the outgrowth of established metastases.
About the Project
Dr Latham’s team is pursuing the preclinical assessment and development of a novel class of drugs that aim to prevent cancer relapse by inhibiting the growth of cells that have already metastasised. This project builds on a larger body of work undertaken in the context of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), which identified oncogenic JNK signalling as a cellular pathway essential for the growth of metastatic TNBC cells.
Impact
To maximise the clinical impact of their drug discovery and development work, Dr Latham will now expand the focus beyond TNBC and assess the full extent to which these novel therapies can be employed to target metastatic disease in other cancer contexts.
Inhibitors could be used to block the growth of disseminated tumour cells and established metastases in these two diseases, where there are limited treatment options and residual metastatic disease after surgery, leading to improved cancer outcomes.