A new drug capable of reducing cancer metastasis

This is a real breakthrough in the world of cancer. A new treatment to reduce the number of metastases as well as the resistance of cancer cells to chemotherapy has been developed by researchers from the Free University of Brussels (ULB), in collaboration with the University of Lyon and Netris Parma, a company of immuno-oncology. Their results were published in the scientific journal Nature on August 2, 2023. This innovative treatment aims to block epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT in English or TEM in French), a process tumor during which cancer cells change their composition and the organization of their proteins to detach from the cell mass to which they belong, thus generating cells endowed with mobility and cellular invasion capacities. As a result, these cells, more invasivepromote the formation and dissemination of metastases and strengthen their resistance to anti-cancer treatments such as chemotherapy for example, reports theAcademy of Medicine in a 2009 scientific opinion. Researchers found that cancer cells that went through this tumor process had high levels of netrin-1 protein. In other words, to block this process, we must target this protein and only an antibody is able to do this. The researchers thus contacted the firm Netris Pharma to develop this antibody. They then tested the effect of their treatment on mice, then on patients withendometrial cancer, a type of cancer in which the mechanism of TEM has been demonstrated. At the end of their trial, they observed a marked reduction in this tumor mechanism.

To date, there is no treatment capable of inhibiting epithelial-mesenchymal transition. Researchers must continue their work in order to be able to study the effects of this promising treatment on the long term and on other types of cancers in which the process of TEM can be seen as breast cancer where the lung cancer.