Drug may stop runaway cell growth.

• Position: Cancer - Medical research

A study from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Pharmacy may lead to the development of a drug to stop the growth of cancer cells. Lucio Miele, associate professor of biopharmaceutical sciences, and his team have developed a gene therapy approach as well as a potentially new use for a class of drugs known as gamma-secretase inhibitors (GSIs), which are already under investigation as a treatment for Alzheimer's disease. GSIs block gamma secretase, an enzyme that produces a harmful protein in the brains of people with Alzheimer's. Miele's study shows that inhibiting gamma secretase can block intercellular communications in cancer cells as well.

Cancer occurs when several genes within a cell are damaged. Earlier research has found that a type of gene called Ras is one of the most-commonly damaged or inappropriately activated genes in human malignant tumors. Miele's research builds on that discovery. His findings show that, when damaged or excessively activated in human cells, Ras, through gamma secretase, activates a protein known as Notch-1, which in turn triggers a chain of events that allow cancer cells to grow. "If we stop Notch, we stop Ras and, ultimately, we can stop cancers that depend on it for survival," he maintains.

Miele is one of several scientists who have been finding Notch gene alterations in various cancers. "But all that had been found so far was that the expression of these genes seemed increased in various tumors for unknown reasons," he notes. "Nobody had described what causes...