NEW DRUG IN PROSTATE CANCER
BOĞAZIÇI UNIVERSITY, COLLEGE DE FRANCE AND FRENCH BIOTECHNOLOGY COMPANY IPSEN COLLABORATED FOR A NEW TREATMENT AIMED AT THE COMPLETE DESTRUCTION OF TUMOR CELLS IN PROSTATE CANCER.
The executive director of the project is Assoc. Prof. Umut Şahin, Faculty Member of the Molecular Biology and Genetics Department of Boğaziçi University. The drug in question will be the first treatment developed in this concept in the treatment of prostate cancer in the world.
Within the scope of the ongoing project with the partnership of Boğaziçi University, College de France and international biotechnology company Ipsen, the cell with cancer is targeted to be destrcuted at all by applying a new treatment method in prostate cancer. Providing information about this treatment, which is a first in the literature, Assoc. Prof. Şahin stated that prostate cancer ranks second after lung cancer in men worldwide, and that it can be treated with surgery but it is resistant to treatment at advanced stages and is prone to metastasis in early diagnosis.
Therefore, expressing that there is an important need for targeted therapy in prostate cancer, Umut Şahin said that they are developing a new treatment that will be a first in the literature in this field and continued:
“We now plan to use a new treatment method in prostate cancer, which we have used and obtained successful results before in two different types of leukemia. We developed a different drug that works based on the same treatment method. The goal of our targeted drug is to bind to the androgen receptor and completely destroy it, rather than blocking it after binding. This is a very new treatment concept. The androgen receptor is actually a protein. The life and cycle of the cell depends on different proteins. But all proteins have a lifetime, they are destroyed after a while. This new drug also helps the cell turn to that destruction mechanism. In other words, when the drug binds to the androgen receptor, it destroys the cell, and the prostate cancer cells that depend on it also die. What is exciting here is that only prostate cancer cells die, the focus of the problem is destroyed, and while doing so it does not harm other healthy cells”.
Stating that the drug to be developed will be effective on prostate cancer cells that do not respond to current treatments, Şahin stated that the drug will be the first treatment developed in this concept in the treatment of prostate cancer in the world. Stating that the preclinical studies of the drug are carried out with animal experiments and they are as productive as the second generation drugs in the market, Umut Şahin informed “In the most optimistic case, the drug will be available to humans when all phase studies are completed within 3-5 years.
As one of the scientists who have been deemed worthy of research support from Turkey within the scope of the Gilead Sciences Turkey program that has been operating in the field of biotechnology since 2013, Assoc. Prof. Umut Şahin has also received the “The Ideas put into Practice” award.