COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Thanks to a $2.3 million grant from the National Institute of Health, researchers at Texas A&M's School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences are exploring immunotherapy that could be the first of its kind to treat colon cancer and hopefully be the key to treating other forms of cancer.
"I've been working on these compounds for I won't tell you how long and they've been very effective in multiple tumor types," TAMU Distinguished Professor Stephen Safe said. "You know, we've looked at breast, colon, rhabdomyosarcoma, and several others, and they're very effective."
The new drug class was developed in Dr. Safe's laboratory at Texas A&M in the Veterinary Physiology & Pharmacology Department. The project is testing the effects of the new compounds on human and rodent cancer cells.
"We've improved them about tenfold. So they're tenfold more active, meaning that we need that much lower dose to inhibit a tumor," Safe said. "We've been getting better in terms of our cancer agents. And we're getting pretty consistent results over quite a few tumor types."
The compounds target two receptors — NR4A1 and NR4A2 — and inhibits them or block them from working. According to Safe, preliminary data indicates that these compounds kill the tumor, but that isn't the only thing that makes the drugs unique.
"What we've shown and I think what was exciting to the reviewers of the grant, is that we target not only the tumor, but the immune cells. The immune cells that surround the tumor are exhausted, and we rejuvenate them," Safe said.
The research group is now shifting their focus towards the next phase, as they use the grant to explore other applications for the compounds and hopefully, prepare them for clinical trials.