As a PhD student in biological and biomedical sciences, Chang is pioneering a new approach to cancer treatment, one that targets the genes required for the disease’s growth and survival. If he’s successful, his research could effect a paradigm shift in the treatment of some types of cancer—saving countless lives in the process.
The vast majority of therapeutics are organized around the idea that cancers need something to keep them growing. That’s why most are aimed at blocking or deleting genes and signaling pathways—those biochemical processes that control functions like cell division or death.
The problem with this approach is that it kills normal healthy cells as well as cancerous ones. That’s why patients sometimes experience side effects like hair loss, bruising and bleeding, and gastrointestinal distress from chemotherapies. There are some targeted inhibitor drugs that aim to block signaling more specifically in cancer cells, but only a small fraction of patients with the “right genetic mutations” can benefit from them.
Chang’s research, on the other hand, focuses on turning on aspects of the signaling pathways that will be selectively lethal in cancer cells, not healthy ones.
Part of the inspiration for this counter-intuitive approach can be seen in the mechanism of action for an FDA-approved drug known as a BRAF inhibitor. The BRAF gene belongs to a class known as oncogenes that, when mutated, have the potential to cause normal cells to become cancerous. The drug selectively targets BRAF, interfering with the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway that regulates the proliferation and survival of melanoma cells.
View the full article at https://gsas.harvard.edu/news/turning-cancer-itself.