A research team co-led by scientists at The Wistar Institute has combined a promising cancer therapy with a molecule that targets tumors to treat cancer more effectively. The new approach, they suggest, could be a way to deliver treatment directly to tumors at higher doses, while reducing side effects in healthy tissue. The novel chimeric small molecule, designated NN-01-195, combines an aurora kinase A (AURKA) inhibitor with an HSP90-binding construct that targets the molecule to tumors. The team reported promising results with the molecule in lab-grown cells and in animal models. “An Aurora kinase A (AURKA) inhibitor is viewed as a lethal synthetic molecule in cancer therapy, but the problem is you can’t dose it high enough, because then it starts to spill over and target normal cells, causing toxicity,” said coauthor Joseph Salvino, PhD, professor in the Molecular and Cellular Oncogenesis Program at the Ellen and Ronald Caplan Cancer Center, and scientific director of The Wistar’s Molecular Screening & Protein Expression Facility. “By using this cancer-targeting approach, we can direct this molecule, which is already in clinical use, to cancer cells, increasing its exposure in the tumor itself.” Salvino is co-author of the researchers published paper in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, in a paper titled “NN-01-195, a novel conjugate of HSP90 and AURKA inhibitors, effectively targets solid tumors,” in which they concluded “The work presented here demonstrates that NN-01-195 is a promising pilot compound for a new strategy of targeting AURKA.” “Aurora kinase A (AURKA) regulates cell cycle progression into…
