National Institute Tests Cancer Destroyer

It has taken nearly 12 years for Doris Benbrook to get her cancer- destroying compound to the clinical testing stage. The drug targets cancer cells, leaving other cells alone.

Benbrook, a molecular biologist at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, joined the clinical department to learn what doctors are up against on a day-to-day basis to better focus her research in that direction.

Therefore, what began with a Vitamin A molecule that Benbrook tweaked until optimized, resulted in being able to take advantage of its anti-cancer activity while avoiding the toxicity associated with it.

A really promising drug has been developed right here in Oklahoma, Benbrook said.

Part of her work now is trying to understand how a normal cell becomes a cancer cell, which is where her studies began. Many drugs are fairly effective against cancer cells, but not as effective against ovarian cancer, she said, which is difficult to identify until it’s in a much later stage.

Now (the new drug S-HetA2) has been potent against pretty much every cancer that we’ve tested it on – even head and neck cancer and leukemia, she said.

Benbrook and K. Darrell Berlin, a chemist at Oklahoma State University, are waiting while research labs test the drug.

The National Cancer Institute is spending $2 million to take the compound to the level of Investigational New Drug approval, which is the Food and Drug Administration’s approval for clinical trial and the license necessary to start testing in humans, which she estimates should begin with the next two years. In about five years, Benbrook estimates S-HetA2 will be ready for market.

The patent on the drug was issued last year to OUHSC and OSU jointly.

The team tested the drug, which would be available in pill form, in a standard 60-cell line screen, which includes leukemia, lung, colon, central nervous system, melanoma, ovarian, renal, prostate and breast cancers.

It was effective against all of them, Benbrook said.

The drug induces a natural form of cell suicide called apoptosis.

Benbrook said her major focus now is to understand the molecular mechanism with which it is inducing apoptosis. This, she said, will help with further developments.

A lot of drugs are real exciting and then they get to clinical trial and there’s some problem with them, she said. So we’re trying to have drugs down the pipeline. If we can understand the mechanism of action of this drug that’s working so see and understand what structures of the drug are required for that action, then we can go ahead and make a whole series of them.

With this treatment, it is possible that the need for chemotherapy or radiation could be eliminated altogether as S-HetA2 targets and kills cancer cells with no found side effects, including those of the skin and liver.

I believe this means both a way to prevent and treat cancer without toxicity, she said. This is not toxic, and we can use it to prevent cancer developing in people who are at high risk.

Benbrook said she would like to keep the drug in Oklahoma, because up until this point everything was started, developed and made in-state, as was the bulk of the research. This, of course, would require the interest on behalf of a pharmaceutical or upstart biotech company based in Oklahoma.

Benbrook said this accomplishment is in line with the major goals in cancer research right now – to take a person’s cancer and conduct a molecular profile on it to understand what has gone wrong with the cancer and then administer a drug known to target that specific cancer.

If we can start understanding the molecules that are changed in cancer versus normal cells and then have a whole pharmacopeias of pharmaceuticals that can target those individual molecules, we can pretty much treat each person on an individual basis with drugs that aren’t going to be like the current set of toxic drugs and the radiation where you just massively try to kill the cancer cells more than normal cells, she said.

We can take a molecularly targeted approach and individualize it for the patient.

A year ago September, OUHSC opened a national cancer institute designated cancer center. The discovery of S-HetA2 will come out of that cancer center, which will help it reach a status whereby it will be fully funded and can participate in the clinical trials locally.