Turkish Nobel laureate in chemistry Aziz Sancar has announced that his research into a new treatment for brain tumours – a condition that affects around 1% of the population – will soon enter the clinical trial phase, during which it will be tested on humans over a two-year period after obtaining ‘very promising results’ against brain tumours in laboratory tests.
In statements reported by the Anatolia news agency, Sancar – who won the 2015 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his research on DNA repair – said he has been working on the idea of this new treatment for a decade, although it was on 17 February 2022 that he announced what he called an ‘exciting discovery’ and began work in his laboratory on a new treatment for brain cancer, carrying out the first experiments on mice.
According to the Turkish scientist, one of the most widely used chemicals in molecular biology is the EdU molecule. It has been known for years that, when this molecule is added to cell cultures, it is able to kill cancer cells; but until now, no significant progress had been made in this way.
The problem facing cancer treatments to date
One of the main problems scientists face when using drugs against brain tumours, according to Sancar, is that they are unable to cross the so-called ‘blood-brain barrier’: a highly selective barrier that separates blood from brain extracellular fluid, allowing water and other molecules vital to the functioning of neurons to pass through, but preventing the entry of other substances that are foreign or harmful to the brain.
This is the case, for example, with Cisplatin, a drug widely used in cancer patients but which, due to this natural barrier, is unable to reach the brain. However, Sincar stressed that the EdU molecule has shown that it is able to cross the blood-brain barrier without any problems, opening up a whole range of possibilities in the treatment of brain cancer and a source of hope for patients suffering from this disease.
‘Our discovery allows us to create a compound that easily penetrates the brain and selectively eradicates cancer cells,’ said Sancar. ‘We have collaborated with neuroscience departments at several universities, obtaining human brain tumour samples and placing them on mouse brain samples, creating a cellular environment that closely resembles the real one. After injecting human tumour cells into mouse brains, we observed the impact of the EdU molecule on the brain tumours,’ the expert explained.
After achieving 25% efficacy, the new treatment will be tested in humans
‘In the early stages, conventional medication was more effective, but after 30-40 days we observed that EdU had a more potent effect, with an efficacy of up to 25%. When combined with existing treatments, the results were even more promising,’ said Sincar, who highlighted EdU’s selective action against cancer cells that multiply uncontrollably, providing it with an enormous potential as a therapeutic agent in cancer treatments.
Because of these unique properties of EdU, the molecule could be the basis of a new drug effective against brain tumours, said the Turkish Nobel laureate, as it is able to target and destroy tumour brain cells without damaging healthy neurons. ‘EdU shows considerable efficacy in animal models of brain cancer, but we need to conduct clinical trials in the next two years to fully investigate its side effects in humans. During that time, we will focus on the safety level of this molecule in humans,’ the scientist concluded.
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Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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