Researchers at Los Angeles-based City of Hope recently announced promising results for a new chemotherapy pill that "appears to annihilate all solid tumors," according to research published Aug. 1 in Cell Chemical Biology.
Data from the preclinical research has so far demonstrated effectiveness in fighting cancerous cells including those caused by breast, prostate, brain, ovarian, cervical, skin and lung cancers, the health system stated in the release.
The pill — called AOH1996 — has also officially been given to the first clinical trial patient, one who has experienced recurrent solid tumors. So far, they are responding well to it, City of Hope reported. The pill targets a small molecule PCNA inhibitor, which the health system explains is "a protein that in its mutated form is critical in DNA replication and repair of all expanding tumors."
"City of Hope was able to develop an investigational medicine for a challenging protein target," Long Gu, PhD, lead author of the research and an associate research professor in the Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope. "We discovered that PCNA is one of the potential causes of increased nucleic acid replication errors in cancer cells. Now that we know the problem area and can inhibit it, we will dig deeper to understand the process to develop more personalized, targeted cancer medicines."
A phase 1 clinical trial of the pill is ongoing, according to the health system.
Editor's note: This article was updated Aug. 4 at 7:45 a.m. CT.