| Project title | Pharmacological Inhibition of MCL-1 and BCL-XL to Treat Human Medulloblastoma |
|---|---|
Grant Amount | $200,000 |
Institution | The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research |
Investigator Team | Principal investigator Prof. Andreas Strasser |
Grant Type | 2014 Innovation Grant |
Years | 2014 – 2016 |
Medulloblastoma mostly affects young children and current therapies are highly invasive with substantial side effects; this necessitates long periods of hospitalisation and recovery. Prof. Andreas Strasser and his team hope to develop novel strategies to treat patients with brain cancer in a more effective and less invasive way to ideally achieve complete regression of the tumour and prolonged survival without the commonly observed detrimental side effects, by minimising the damage to healthy tissues. They aim to provide patients with better quality of life by developing improved treatment strategies, thus allowing them to spend more time outside the hospital with their families
Prof. Andreas Strasser and his team aim to develop novel strategies to efficiently kill brain cancer cells without causing intolerable damage to healthy tissues, by utilising recently developed BH3-mimetic drugs that directly activate the cell death pathway. Notably two of these drugs are currently undergoing phase 2 clinical trials for the treatment of haematological cancers whereas another has only recently been developed and is still undergoing pre-clinical testing.
“We aim to develop emerging drugs that block the machinery for cellular survival (developed in a collaboration between our laboratory and major pharma companies) for the treatment of brain cancers with poor prognosis.”
Prof. Andreas Strasser
Progress
We showed that these BH3 mimetic drugs can efficiently kill a broad range of cancer cells. Excitingly, one drug we developed in partnership with Genentech and AbbVie (ABT-199/venetoclax), has been approved in the last year for the treatment of refractory chronic lymphocytic leukaemia in the US, European Union and Australia.
Remarkably, in tissue culture, ‘BH3-mimetic drugs’ can kill human brain cancer cells much more potently than the currently used chemotherapeutics. Hence, we propose that patients with brain cancer might benefit from these promising new drugs. With the support of the Cure Brain Cancer Foundation, we have established a brain cancer mouse model to test and evaluate the potential of BH3-mimetic drugs for the treatment of patients with brain cancer.
Upon successful demonstration of the potential benefit of these drugs for the treatment of brain cancers in our pre-clinical studies, we will engage clinical collaborators to proceed with clinical trials. Our pharmaceutical industry partnerships and clinical collaborations with the Royal Melbourne Hospital put us in an excellent position to rapidly translate our research results into the clinic.