Indian expert finds new drugs to treat cancer

A GROUP of scientists in the US, including an Indian-American from the prestigious Cleveland Clinic, have identified a potential new class of drugs that may prove effective in treating certain common types of blood and bone marrow cancers.

First published in the latest edition of Blood Cancer Discovery, the decade long research which reports that a new pharmacological strategy to preferentially target and eliminate leukemia cells with TET2 mutations, was carried out by Jaroslaw Maciejewski and his collaborator Babal Kant Jha from the Cleveland Clinic Department of Translational Hematology and Oncology Research.

Myeloid leukemias are cancers derived from stem and progenitor cells in the bone marrow that give rise to all normal blood cells. One of the most common mutations involved in driving myeloid leukemias are found in the TET2 gene, which has been investigated for the last decade by Maciejewski and Jha.

Maciejewski’s and Jha’s new pharmacologic strategy to selectively eliminate TET2 mutant leukemia cells centers on targeting their reliance on this residual DNA dioxygenase activity, it said. ‘We took lessons from the natural biological capabilities of 2HG,” explained Jha, a principal investigator.’

‘We studied the molecule and rationally designed a novel small molecule, synthesized by our chemistry group headed by James Phillips, PhD. Together, we generated TETi76-a similar, but more potent version capable of inhibiting not just TET2, but also the remaining disease-driving enzymatic activity of TET1 and TET3,’ Jha said.