Jan. 16, 2025
New Option for an Aggressive Cancer
Nitro fatty acids may help both inflammation and therapies for cancer.
TOPICS: Cancer & Immunotherapy | School of Medicine
Designs on Aging-Ready
By Strategic Communications
Bruce Freeman has spent years translating molecules called nitro fatty acids, which he and collaborators had found to have anti-inflammatory effects, into drugs for a variety of conditions. But, several years ago, a potential drawback concerned him.
“We had to evaluate whether these anti-inflammatory molecules, which were entering into human safety studies, might accelerate tumor cell growth,” recalls Freeman, Distinguished Professor, UPMC-Irwin Fridovich Professor, and chair, Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
“Our mission is to give new optimism to patients with little hope.”
Bruce Freeman, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology
He teamed up with Carola Neumann, associate professor of pharmacology and chemical biology, to study the fatty acids’ effect on triple-negative breast cancer, one of the most aggressive cancers and among the hardest to treat.
What the team found was that nitro fatty acids, far from accelerating tumor growth, instead were a possible therapy for patients with this brutal disease.
The nitro fatty acids, by interacting with a cysteine, inhibit the function of a protein called RAD51. This hinders the DNA repair pathway that allows the cancer to resist therapies that try to kill it.
“The thing that Carola and the team have seen is that when you add in a nitro fatty acid that inhibits DNA repair, triple-negative breast cancer is highly sensitive to radiation treatment and DNA-targeting therapy,” says Freeman.
They’ve identified a drug candidate that they envision as a once-a-day oral pill. The team is currently working on completing studies to support FDA approval to test the lead compound in human trials.
“Our mission is to give new optimism to patients with little hope,” Freeman says.