New York City-based Weill Cornell Medicine has received a $2.5 million, three-year grant from the Defense Department to develop lower-side-effect therapies for triple-negative breast cancer.
Triple-negative breast cancer lacks the estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor and HER2 proteins that many targeted therapies attack, leaving chemotherapy as the primary option for many patients, according to a July 16 health system news release.
Xiaojing Ma, PhD, professor of microbiology and immunology and a member of Weill Cornell’s Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center, is co-principal investigator on the project. He is working with Gang Lin, PhD, professor of research in microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell, to develop first-in-class drugs targeting UBR5, a protein frequently overproduced in aggressive breast cancers and other hard-to-treat malignancies.
The researchers previously found that disrupting the UBR5 gene slowed breast tumor growth and reduced metastasis in preclinical models. The grant will fund efforts to refine small molecule drugs and protein degraders that target UBR5 at lower, less toxic concentrations, then test them in laboratory models that mimic human cancers.
“Although the current project focuses on triple-negative breast cancer, UBR5 is also overproduced in ovarian, pancreatic and prostate cancers,” Dr. Ma said in the release. “Success in this program could open the door to a new generation of targeted therapies for multiple aggressive cancers.”
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