This technology is a collection of small molecules for targeted cancer therapy associated with the RAS oncogene.
Many anti-cancer drugs currently on the market come with significant side effects to patients because they are often not particularly selective for tumor cells, and can cause unwanted damage or death to normal cells. As a result, molecular targeted cancer therapeutics directed at inhibiting specific oncogenic proteins or pathways represent a promising approach to cancer drug discovery. One limitation of this approach is that some oncogenic proteins, such as the RAS oncoproteins, have been difficult to target effectively with small molecules. Therefore, there is a substantial need for identifying oncogene-selective lethal compounds that kill tumor cells only in the presence of specific oncoproteins.
This technology identifies RAS-selective-lethal compounds capable of inducing rapid and nonapoptotic cell death in oncogenic, RAS-containing tumorigenic cells. One such compound that displays the oncogenic-RAS-synthetic-lethality (RSL) is RSL3. The active stereoisomer of RSL3 possesses selective lethality towards tumor cells containing oncogenic RAS, without non-specific targeting of cancer cells that do not contain the specific oncogenic protein. As such, this technology provides potent drug candidates capable of targeting select cancer cells, without the risk of harming healthy cells.
These compounds exhibited selective lethality in engineered fibroblast-derived tumorigenic cell lines.
IR M10-018-a
Licensing Contact: Joan Martinez
