An ‘Achilles Heel’ for Aggressive Prostate Cancer Found, UCSF says

Resistant Cancers Self-Destruct When Exposed to Experimental Drug

May 3, 2018. PSA Rising / UCSF / San Francisco researchers have discovered a promising new line of attack against lethal, treatment-resistant prostate cancer. Analysis of hundreds of human prostate tumors revealed that the most aggressive cancers depend on a built-in cellular stress response to put a brake on their own hot-wired physiology. Experiments in mice and with human cells showed that blocking this stress response with an experimental drug — previously shown to enhance cognition and restore memory after brain damage in rodents — causes treatment-resistant cancer cells to self-destruct while leaving normal cells unaffected.

Metastatic prostate cancer cells treated with experimental drug ISRIB.
Metastatic human prostate cancer cells transplanted into a mouse self-destruct (red) when treated with ISRIB, an experimental drug that exposes cancer cells to their full, unhealthy appetite for protein synthesis. Credit: Ruggero Lab / UCSF

The new study was published online May 2, 2018 in Science Translational Medicine. Continue reading “An ‘Achilles Heel’ for Aggressive Prostate Cancer Found, UCSF says”