Prodrugs As a Useful Approach to Targeting Distinctive Aspects of Cancer Metabolism

The goal of cancer research should be to produce a robust, highly effective universal cancer therapy, or as close to universal as possible. One treatment that can be deployed for every type of cancer, with a very good chance of inducing remission. Attempting to tackle cancer subtypes one by one based on their genetic peculiarities is simply not efficient enough to produce meaningful progress in our lifetimes. Further, most cancers are subject to high mutation rates, and in a sizable fraction of patients will prove to be quite capable of evolving immunity to any therapy that targets a non-essential aspect of cancer biochemistry. Cancer cells as a class are metabolically very different from normal cells; they have to be in order to power the rampant growth characteristic of tumor tissue. This presents a broad area of discovery for the development of prodrugs, molecules in which a toxic drug is amended to become non-toxic in a way that can be reversed by the activity of enzymes present only in the the targeted cell populations. This in principle allows for any usefully toxic chemotherapeutic drug, of which there are many, to be amended into a non-toxic form that will be near entirely processed back into the original toxic drug only by cancer cells. Importantly, at least some prodrug strategies of this nature might be applicable to a broad range of cancers. Researchers Design 'Prodrug' That Targets Cancer Cells' Big Appetite for Glutamine, Leaving Healthy Cells Unha...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs