Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Life-changing compound?
Scripps Florida scientists’ bold strategy could help breast cancer patients
Scripps Florida scientist Matthew Disney and his research team in Jupiter have developed a compound that could help make breast cancer patients more receptive to treatment. There are drugs that have been shown to be effective with fast-growing breast cancer cells. Only 1 in 5 women, or 20 percent, have the type of cancer that can benefit from the drugs.
Survival rates have surged since the drug Herceptin was introduced.
More than 84 percent of breast cancer patients treated with Herceptin and chemotherapy were still alive after 10 years, according a 2014 published study of 4,000 patients.
With the Scripps compound, “it’s possible that precision medicines like Herceptin can be made available to a wider group of people,” Disney said. For breast cancer patients with dwindling options, shifting cancer cells to the type that accept treatment might be “lifechanging,” he said.
But Herceptin, developed by San Francisco-based Genentech and approved by the FDA in 1998, has only been effective for patients with HER2-positive cancer cells, which tend to be more aggressive in their growth.
But HER2-negative cancer cells have not responded to the drugs, although the tumors can respond to chemotherapy alone.
So the Scripps scientists set out to design a compound that makes HER2-negative more sensitive to effective drugs, including Herceptin and Kadcyla, another drug approved to treat fast-growing breast cancer.
While Scripps’ compound allowed targeting of the cancer cells, healthy breast cells were unaffected, according to the research institute.
Disney cautions that there is a long way to go in continued research before any patients might benefit. The team has had successful tests in cultured cells, but now must do tests in mice, a process that will take several years, he said.
The Scripps chemist has had previous success in medical research, as well as advancing research to drug development that could potentially help patients.
Last year, Disney’s drug development company Expansion Therapeutics was spun off from Scripps Florida; it was the largest spinoff since the institute was founded in 2014. Expansion Therapeutics, which is developing drugs that target muscular dystrophy, operates out of wet labs at Florida Atlantic University adjacent to Scripps Florida in Jupiter, as well as San Diego.
In 2015, Disney was a recipient of the “Pioneer Award” from the National Institute of Health, for scientists developing groundbreaking approaches.