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Newly developed chemical compounds hold promise as potential cancer therapies
A team of researchers at the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center developed new chemical compounds that show promise as a potential cancer therapy to treat aggressive tumors. The study, led by Samuel G. Awuah, Ph.D., was published in Chemical Communications with Adedamola Arojojoye, a graduate student in Awuah's lab, as the paper's first author. The new gold-derived compounds created by Awuah's lab were toxic to cancer cells but were well tolerated by mice, giving them potential for developing new cancer drugs that could make it to the clinic. Many metal-based therapies have been shown to be effective against cancer, with platinum-based drugs being a first-line chemotherapy...
Newly developed chemical compounds hold promise as potential cancer therapies
A team of researchers at the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center developed new chemical compounds that show promise as a potential cancer therapy to treat aggressive tumors.
The study, led by Samuel G. Awuah, Ph.D., was published in Chemical Communications with Adedamola Arojojoye, a graduate student in Awuah's lab, as the paper's first author.
The new gold-derived compounds created by Awuah's lab were toxic to cancer cells but were well tolerated by mice, giving them potential for developing new cancer drugs that could make it to the clinic.
Many metal-based therapies have been shown to be effective against cancer, with platinum-based drugs being a first-line chemotherapy for testicular, bladder, lung, colon and ovarian cancers. Some metal-based compounds, such as gold(III), show promise as anticancer agents, but lack the stability required to continue therapeutic development.
Awuah's lab synthesized a new class of gold(III) that had a different structure that was more tolerant to therapeutic uses.
In the laboratory, the new chiral gold(III) compounds were studied on a range of cancer cell lines to test their effectiveness and understand how they attack cancer cells.
The compounds demonstrated anticancer activity against aggressive triple-negative breast cancer cells. They also had a new mechanism that caused the cells' mitochondria to malfunction.
Awuah says developing drugs that cause mitochondrial dysfunction deprives cancer cells of energy and represents a new relevant strategy for inhibiting cancer growth that would be useful in combination with existing therapies.
Further development of gold-based compounds has the potential to develop new mechanisms of drug action, and understanding how they alter cancer cells has significant implications for drug design and is of clinical relevance.”
Samuel G. Awuah, Ph.D.
Awuah is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the College of Pharmacy. His laboratory focuses on developing new methods for producing chemical tools that study complex biological processes as therapeutics for various diseases, including cancer.
Source:
Reference:
Arojojoye, AS, et al. (2022) Chiral gold(iii) complexes: speciation, in vitro and in vivo anticancer profile. Chemical communication. doi.org/10.1039/D2CC03081K.
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