Strategy to reduce side effects in modern cancer therapy

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Vienna (Institute of Inorganic Chemistry) and the Medical University of Vienna (Institute for Cancer Research) has successfully developed a new strategy for reducing the often serious side effects of an important class of modern anticancer drugs (tyrosine kinase inhibitors). The novel drug is supposed to restrict its activity with high selectivity to the malignant tumour. The occurrence of severe side effects and the development of resistance are two of the biggest problems facing modern cancer therapy. Even the latest, highly targeted cancer drugs such as the tyrosine kinase inhibitors Tarceva(R) or Sutent(R) are affected by these problems, which can ultimately lead to treatment having to be stopped. The effect of this class of inhibitors is based on the specific inhibition of proteins that are over-activated in cancer cells and which drive abnormal cell growth. However, clinical practice has shown that, as a result of the physiological functions of these proteins in healthy tissue, their inhibition can cause severe side effects. As a result, there is an acute need for strategies to restrict the effect of these highly promising new drugs more selectively to the malignant tumour.