After spending over a decade on the project, a team of researchers at the University of Saskatchewan has identified a new target for suppressing breast cancer growth.

Lead researchers Dr. Franco Vizeacoumar and Dr. Andrew Freywald used a genetic screening approach to determine which genes are fueling the growth of breast cancer tumours.

The duo first drew their attention to an enzyme called PLK1, which is known to aid in tumour growth and is often found in large quantities within cancer cells. However, they couldn’t just target PLK1, as healthy human cells also contain that enzyme.

“When you try and inhibit that, you also have some cross off-target effects, and that is the main challenge. So, we don’t want to inhibit directly PLK1, but instead we wanted to look for genetic dependencies. What is PLK1 really dependent on, and can we inhibit those genetic dependencies of PLK1?” posed Vizeacoumar.

Through looking at a variety of genes at a single-cell level, the pair were able to pinpoint one that is responsible for modulating and regulating PLK1 levels. It’s called IGF2BP2. “We were able to turn off PLK by controlling another gene,” Vizeacoumar explains.

Freywald adds that by turning off this gene, tumour growth was suppressed dramatically. “As soon as we inhibit IGF2BP2, tumours stopped growing, or they grew very slowly.”

Not only did they find a target gene, but they also identified a chemical able to inhibit the gene, which is currently serving as a prototype but could eventually be transformed into a treatment drug.

“It can be easily synthesized. Currently, our German-group collaborators actually synthesize it in their lab and send it to us for all our experiments…We have done some toxicity studies, (trying to determine) how long this drug is stable in the bloodstream,” stated Vizeacoumar. Moving forward, they hope to make this molecule more stable by introducing drug-like properties.

“The cool thing about this particular paper is that we did this all at a single cell level…which is actually one of the highest levels of technology available.” He adds that they are one of the first groups in Canada to do this sort of single-cell basis screening.”

Although this research was conducted on breast cancer, the duo stated that PLK1 is over-expressed in nearly every type of cancer. This means that that this type of treatment could be used to target various cancer growths.

“This is still a work in progress, but we need a lot of cash to do that,” Vizeacoumar chuckled. “So, the next step is to apply for more grants and search for funding. That’s the biggest challenge…Funding is the bottleneck here to move forward.”

If anyone is interested in supporting this research, they can reach out to the College of Medicine here and indicate that the funding should be directed to this project.