Dr Tuna Mutis at the VU University Medical Center in the Netherlands has been studying a new drug that has already shown promise in colon and head and neck cancers. Recent results from Dr Mutis’ lab show that the new drug could help overcome treatment resistance in advanced cases of multiple myeloma.
Multiple myeloma is a cancer that affects special cells in the bone marrow that produce antibodies - small molecules that help our immune system fight infections in the body.
Whilst survival rates have been improving, multiple myeloma is not considered a curable cancer and almost all patients eventually see their cancer return and develop resistance to treatments.
Cancer cells can become resistant to treatment by recruiting surrounding healthy cells to support them.
Dr Mutis and his team found that not only is the new drug - called FL118 - effective at killing multiple myeloma cells when they are surrounded by these support cells, but it was also able to reverse treatment resistance. These are important findings, as they suggest that the new drug could have the potential to treat patients that are no longer responding to standard therapies.
FL118 also enhanced the effect of two drugs that are commonly used to treat multiple myeloma. When tested in a mouse model of multiple myeloma, FL118 was able to shrink the tumour to almost a sixth of its original size and to delay tumour growth for up to 5 weeks.
These exciting results suggest that FL118 could be useful when combined with currently available drugs to overcome treatment resistance.
The drug has the potential to be highly effective in treatment resistant patients – a group that urgently needs new therapeutic options. But before any new drug can be approved for regular use, it needs to be tested in patients.
The first step towards using this compound in the clinic is to do a phase one clinical trial, which judges the safety of the drug. Our collaborators, who also provided this compound, are now planning this trial. In addition to this, we are also testing whether this new drug could improve immune therapy. This would be another important effect, which could demonstrate its usefulness in a wide variety of cancers – not just multiple myeloma.
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