The compound, named DK-AT390HCl, could become the basis for a future therapy for colorectal cancer.
It was developed by a team of scientists from the Kraków University of Technology in southern Poland, the University of Agriculture in Krakow and the Polish Academy of Sciences' Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy.
“We already have more than the seed of a drug. It is an early version of a working therapeutic system,” said Damian Kułaga, a researcher at the Kraków University of Technology who led the team.
The Kraków University of Technology said the joint research has already led to four patents covering the preliminary anti-cancer activity of DK-AT390HCl and related compounds.
One of the patent applications was filed through the Patent Cooperation Treaty, a system that can help inventors seek protection in multiple countries.
The university said it is considering selling or licensing patent rights to a pharmaceutical company in Poland or abroad, after securing international protection, and said an industry partner could help finance and accelerate further studies.
The work is still at a preclinical stage, and researchers cautioned that the path from a promising compound to an approved medicine is typically long and uncertain.
Still, the team says the results so far point to a possible approach to tackling one of the most common cancers worldwide, and one that remains a leading cause of cancer deaths.
The Kraków University of Technology said its scientists have spent several years designing and screening new chemical compounds that could eventually be used against colorectal cancer (CRC) and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), an aggressive breast cancer subtype that lacks three common molecular targets used in treatment.
The researchers synthesized more than 200 new molecules and ultimately selected DK-AT390HCl for further work.
Although the compound did not show standout activity against triple-negative breast cancer cell lines in early testing, further biological research suggested it was highly effective against colorectal cancer cells while causing little damage to healthy cells.
The biological work was led by Izabela Siemińska of the Kraków University of Agriculture.
Kułaga said the selectivity matters because many cancer therapies can come with serious side effects when they harm healthy tissue alongside tumours. He added that cancer cells can also develop resistance to treatment, in a way that can resemble bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics.
One proposed mechanism behind DK-AT390HCl involves interfering with autophagy, a natural cellular recycling process.
Autophagy, or “self-eating,” helps cells break down damaged components to generate energy and materials needed for repair and growth.
Researchers said cancer cells can intensify autophagy in harsh conditions, including during chemotherapy, especially in tumours with some particular mutations.
"We want to stop this process so the cancer cells have no way to defend themselves," Kułaga said in a press release.
The team, which included Laura Paradyak, Paweł Szczerbik, and Zbigniew Arent, said it ran a broad set of preclinical checks, including laboratory tests of toxicity and tumour-cell behaviour, as well as studies in mice.
They assessed maximum tolerated doses and looked at whether the compound could reduce tumour mass, along with molecular analyses of tumour tissue.
“The newly discovered compound acts selectively on cancer cells, without destroying healthy tissues,” Siemińska said, adding that the results are promising for further work on a colorectal cancer treatment.
She stressed, however, that many more stages of research, including clinical trials, would be required before any therapy could reach patients.
The next steps, the team said, include a key question for many early-stage cancer discoveries: whether a compound that has shown an anti-tumour effect in mice will work in a similar way on human-origin tissues.
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP