More Potent, Less Toxic: Scientists Develop a Better Type of Chemotherapy

Researchers discover a new class of drugs that provide leukemia patients with a safer, more targeted form of therapy.

Chemotherapy isn’t fun. It’s no secret that the drugs used in the treatments often have harmful side effects on both the patient and their cancer. Since tumors grow so rapidly, the theory is that chemotherapy will eradicate the disease before its adverse effects take the patient’s life. Because of this, researchers and medical professionals are always looking for treatments that are more effective.

Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, together with colleagues from the University of California, San Francisco, and Baylor College of Medicine, have discovered two compounds that are both more potent and less toxic than the current leukemia therapies. The molecules operate in a manner that differs from that of conventional cancer treatments and may serve as the foundation for a whole new class of drugs.

Additionally, the compounds are already approved for the treatment of other diseases, which significantly reduces the amount of red tape required in modifying them for the treatment of leukemia or even administering them off-label. The findings were recently published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

“Our work on an enzyme that is mutated in leukemia patients has led to the discovery of an entirely new way of regulating this enzyme, as well as new molecules that are more effective and less toxic to human cells,” said UC Santa Barbara Distinguished Professor Norbert Reich, the study’s corresponding author.

The epigenome

Although every cell in your body has the same