Giusy Di Conza shines a light on current innovations in drug discovery
Q.
Where are the opportunities in Global Innovation and Opportunity in Cancer Drug Discovery?
We are learning more and more about the underlying mechanisms that drive cancer. There’s an opportunity to improve on standard care by inhibiting targets implicated in multiple tumour survival pathways, which will maximise anti-tumour activity whilst optimising safety. This approach could be achieved with either monotherapy or combination therapies that attack cancer cells whilst also unveiling the tumour to the immune system and changing the microenvironment around it to allow drugs to access and kill the cancer cells.
Technological innovations in areas such as gene editing and ex vivo multicellular culture models offer new avenues for studying cancer biology and screening potential therapeutics.
Q.
What is technology’s role in expediting cancer drug development?
Technology continues to serve as a catalyst for accelerating cancer drug development, enabling more efficient target identification, lead optimisation, and preclinical testing. From advanced imaging techniques, omics approaches. sophisticated screening platform and novel bioinformatics algorithms, these tools empower researchers to rapidly sift through vast datasets, identify promising drug candidates, and predict their efficacy with greater precision. Moreover, technological innovations in areas such as gene editing and ex vivo multicellular culture models offer new avenues for studying cancer biology and screening potential therapeutics, ultimately expediting the translation of basic research into clinical applications.
Q.
What is the role of CRISPR-Cas in cancer research?
CRISPR-Cas technology has emerged as a transformative tool in cancer research, offering unparalleled precision in genome editing and the ability to manipulate cellular pathways implicated in tumorigenesis. CRISPR-enabled genome engineering holds promise for developing next-generation immunotherapies and personalised cancer treatments tailored to the unique genetic profiles of individual patients. Finally, CRISPR-Cas9 screening targeting the whole genome have been, and continues to be a powerful tool for unbiased discovery of novel resistance pathways as well as pathways that facilitate the action of a certain therapeutic agent.
Q.
What are the future directions for cancer research?
The future directions aim to drive personalised treatment for cancer patients. Research wise, there will continue to be a focus on back-translational research: Utilizing the information derived from human studies to design mice and in vitro studies to investigate and validate novel signals potentially relevant in patients on treatment. This will allow us to uncover novel biology leading to resistance mechanisms and gives us the right tools to overcome such resistance mechanisms through synergistic intelligent combinations of drugs.
