Texas Cancer Center Discovers New Leukemia-Killing Compounds

Researchers from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Centre and Rice University have discovered potential new compound that work with other drugs to kill leukemia cells.

According to a recently published study in the journal Leukemia, the drug is showing great promise because of the innovative methods that led to its discovery.

The researchers, however, noted that the potential drugs are still years away from being tested in cancer patients.

In previous studies, the research groups of Rice biochemist, Natasha Kirienko and MD Anderson physician-scientist, Marina Konopleva, screened some 45,000 small-molecule compounds to find a few that targeted mitochondria.

In the new study, the research group chose eight of the most promising compounds, identified between five and 30 closely related analogs for each, and conducted tens of thousands of tests to systematically determine how toxic each analog was to Leukemia cells, both when administered individually or in combination with existing chemotherapy drugs like doxorubicin.

According to a study lead by author Svetlana Panina, a researcher at the University of Texas, “One of the big challenges was to establish optimal conditions and doses for testing on both cancer cells and healthy cells.

“The results from our previously published cytotoxicity assay were helpful, but very little is known about these small-molecule compounds. None of them had been thoroughly described in other studies, and we had to essentially start from scratch to determine how much to use, what they do in cells, everything. All the doses and treatment conditions had to be adjusted by multiple preliminary experiments.”

Cancer is notorious for hijacking these sorts of programs to fuel pathological growth. For example, previous research has shown leukemia cells have far more damaged mitochondria than healthy cells and are also more sensitive to mitochondrial damage than healthy cells.

Kirienko and Konopleva reasoned that mitophagy-inducing drugs might weaken leukemia cells and make them more susceptible to chemotherapy.