Jennifer Howes, who works in the Division of Cancer Therapeutics at the ICR, will present initial results of her work at the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) annual conference in San Diego, US.
She gained the opportunity to present after winning an AACR Scholar-in-Training award, designed to support the education and training of early-career scientists by funding the costs of attending AACR meetings.
Major conferences like AACR are important opportunities for researchers to share their work with scientific peers and forge new collaborations with international experts working in similar fields.
Jennifer’s current project is looking for ways to improve the effectiveness of a new family of drugs called heat-shock protein 90 (Hsp90) inhibitors, which have seen impressive results in early trials in various cancer types including lung and breast cancer. Researchers know that Hsp90 inhibitors hit cancer cells in multiple different ways, but they could work even more effectively in tandem with other treatments.
The early results of the project, presented at AACR, suggest that Hsp90 inhibitors might work even more effectively in combination with drugs that target another protein, called the anaphase-promoting complex (APC/C). Jennifer and her colleagues made the discovery by studying cancer cell samples in the laboratory.
Professor Paul Workman, the ICR’s Deputy Chief Executive and Head of Cancer Therapeutics, said: “Hsp90 inhibitors are one of the most exciting classes of drugs we are working on here at the ICR, because of their potential to target several different cancer pathways at once and to sensitise tumours to drugs to which they might otherwise be resistant. Jennifer’s prize-winning work should help to broaden our use of these drugs, by showing how they could be used in combination with other treatments to further benefit patients.”
The project is one of several being presented by ICR scientists at the conference. Several others highlight how researchers in our Division of Cancer Therapeutics are developing new, smarter treatments for cancer. As with this project, our researchers’ work often focuses on gaining in-depth understandings of how potential new drugs work at the molecular level: an understanding of how drugs work means researchers can ultimately select the best candidates for clinical trials.
You can find out more about Hsp90 inhibitors in our video with Professor Workman.