Scientists led by NTU Singapore have found that an existing cancer drug could be repurposed to target a subset of cancers that currently lack targeted treatment options and is often associated with poor outcomes.
This subset of cancers, which make up 15 per cent of all cancers and is especially prevalent in aggressive tumours such as osteosarcomas (bone tumour) and glioblastomas (brain tumour), 'stay immortal' using a mechanism called the alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT).
The team has showed that ponatinib, a cancer drug approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, blocks key steps in the ALT mechanism that leads it to fail. These findings move them a step closer to developing a targeted therapeutic option for ALT cancers, which lack clinically approved targeted treatments to date.
