Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer in the United States and in the world. Many of the therapies currently available have proven ineffective, leaving patients with very few options. A promising new cancer treatment strategy has been bacterial therapy, but although this treatment modality has rapidly moved from laboratory experiments to clinical trials over the past five years, the most effective treatment for some cancers may be in combination with other drugs.
Columbia Engineering researchers report that they have developed a preclinical evaluation pipeline for the characterization of bacterial therapies in lung cancer models. Their new study, released Dec. 13, 2022, by Scientific reports, combines bacterial therapies with other treatment modalities to improve treatment efficacy without any additional toxicity. This novel approach has enabled bacterial therapies to be rapidly characterized and successfully integrated into current targeted therapies for lung cancer.
“We anticipate rapid and selective expansion of our pipeline to improve the efficacy and safety of treating solid tumors,” said first author Dhruba Deb, a research associate studying the effect of bacterial toxins on lung cancer in the laboratory by Professor Tal Danino in Biomedical Engineering. , “As someone who has lost loved ones to cancer, I would love to see this strategy move from the bench to the bedside in the future. »
The team used RNA sequencing to find out how cancer cells respond to bacteria at the cellular and molecular level. They built a hypothesis that molecular pathways in cancer cells help cells resist bacterial therapy. To test their hypothesis, the researchers blocked these pathways with current cancer drugs and showed that combining the drugs with bacterial toxins is more effective at killing lung cancer cells. They validated the combination of bacterial therapy with an AKT inhibitor as an example in mouse models of lung cancer.
This new study describes an exciting drug development pipeline that has never been explored in lung cancer: the use of bacterial-derived toxins. The preclinical data presented in the manuscript provide strong justification for further research in this area, opening up the possibility of new therapeutic options for patients diagnosed with this life-threatening disease.
Upal Basu Roy, executive research director, LUNGevity Foundation, USA
Deb plans to extend her strategy to larger studies of preclinical models of difficult-to-treat lung cancers and collaborate with clinicians to advance clinical translation.
