London, scientists find Cancer weak spots for New Targeted Drugs

A major computational analysis by scientists at the University of Sussex and The Institute of Cancer Research, London, has found a number of potential targets for drugs that exploit the inherent weaknesses of cancer cells.The findings could lead to personalised medicine that 'reads' a cancer patient's DNA and only attacks defective cells, in contrast to the scattergun approach of conventional chemotherapy, which attacks all dividing cells, including healthy ones.
The study is published today (Tuesday 24 February 2015) in the journal Nature Reviews Cancer.
Scientists from the University of Sussex and The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) analysed the patterns of mutations found in the DNA sequences of tumors from more than 5,000 cancer patients.
The team, jointly led by Dr Frances Pearl (Sussex) and Dr Bissan Al-Lazikani (ICR), focused on the 'DNA repair' systems that protect the genetic information of the cell, and are mutated in almost all cancers. Breaking these systems for DNA repair allows cancer cells to divide uncontrollably and generate even more mutations, helping them become resistant to chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
"Knowing which DNA repair processes are defective in an individual tumor allows us to target new drugs that are only toxic to cells with a particular pattern of mutations, cancer cells," said Dr Pearl, who heads the Bioinformatics Research Group at Sussex.
One class of drug called PARP inhibitors already target DNA repair systems. They are being used in clinical trials to treat women with breast or ovarian cancers that have mutations in BRCA genes, and one of the class, Olaparib, has recently been licensed for women with ovarian cancer in Europe and the US.