Project description
A novel anti-RAS treatment
RAS are a family of genes whose mutations are implicated in a variety of different cancers. Despite their ubiquitous oncogenic activity, no effective anti-RAS therapies exist today. Prior work by researchers of the EU-funded RASATaC project had shown that a class of scaffold proteins bind to mutated forms of RAS proteins in cancer to moderate RAS signalling. This triggers cytotoxic signalling and leads to cell death. As a result, they plan to develop drugs that mimic the activity of these scaffold proteins as an innovative approach to target RAS-driven cancers. The results will offer a novel cancer treatment option to patients that do not respond to current standards of care.
Objective
More than a quarter of all cancers are driven by mutations in the RAS family of genes. Considering the key role of these oncogenes, and despite intensive effort, no effective anti-RAS strategies have successfully made it to the clinic. In our ERC-CoG project, we found that a class of scaffold proteins, expressed in cancer, bind to active/mutated forms of RAS proteins to moderate RAS signalling. Accordingly, we find that loss of one of the scaffolding protein isoforms in RAS-mutant cancers triggers cytotoxic signalling, leading to cell death. As such, drugging this scaffold protein could not only i) represent a completely innovative approach to target RAS-driven cancers that exploits the oncogene’s function, but also ii) deliver the first truly effective cancer treatment for patients that do not respond to current standards of care. In this ERC-PoC, we aim to prove that therapeutic targeting of the scaffold protein is effective in vivo, and to explore the commercial avenues to exploit this finding.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-POC-LS - ERC Proof of Concept Lump Sum PilotHost institution
20014 Turku
Finland