Too often, a normal and healthy cellular function can turn deadly when it occurs in cancerous cells. The epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a cellular process crucial to embryonic development and wound healing in humans, but also indicates the beginning of metastasis in cancer patients and is responsible for organ fibrosis and resistance to therapy. Inhibiting the EMT pathway may produce highly effective new cancer therapies and also points to ways to treat and prevent fibrotic and metabolic diseases.
Description
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, in collaboration with researchers from Le Havre University, synthesized a series of novel compounds that may have the potential to inhibit EMT pathways; one candidate compound in particular has displayed incredible inhibitor activity against the Hippo pathway, as well as the Wnt and TGF-beta pathways that a crucial to inducing the EMT pathway. This compound suppresses cancer cell ability to undergo EMT, and therefore prevents the cells from proliferating as well as becoming drug-resistant by activating a degradation complex upstream of the Hippo transducer TAZ. In mice, this compound was shown to exert strong anti-tumor activity with no demonstrable toxicity.
Applications
· Cancer treatment
· Treatment of other fibrotic or metabolic diseases
Advantages
· Inhibits cancer cell proliferation and metastasis
· Prevents the development of drug resistance
Invention Readiness
In vivo data
IP Status
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20220017466A1
