They investigate a protein that improves the effectiveness of chemotherapy
The researcher María Ángel García Chaves, recently awarded by the Royal National Academy of Pharmacy, leads a project that studies the so-called protein kinase "PKR" that would allow knowing, prior to chemotherapy, the effectiveness of this treatment against cancer. This doctor, belonging to the Oncology Clinical Management Unit of the University Hospital Complex of Granada, has been working for years on the discovery and mechanism of action of this protein up to its clinical and therapeutic implications.
Specifically, he has studied the mechanism of action and regulation of "PKR" at the National Center for Biotechnology in Madrid and at the Biosanitary Research Institute of Granada (ibs.GRANADA). The aim is to highlight the importance of this protein as a molecular target for conventional and newly synthesized chemotherapeutic drugs and its potential as a biomarker and therapeutic target in diseases such as cancer and other neurodegenerative and autoimmune diseases.
After his initial work in different laboratories, he has managed to transfer his analysis to patients, what is called “translational” research, in order to achieve a more personalized medicine. As he explains, "PKR" is a protein that responds to cellular stress and that, in cancer patients, is largely responsible for the death of tumor cells when chemotherapy treatment is applied.
Through two projects granted by the Junta de Andalucía and the Carlos III Health Institute, García Chaves intends to study how this protein is found in cancer patients, specifically those of the colon, who respond or not to chemotherapy. The presence of this protein varies greatly depending on the patient, hence the research aims to relate its status to the patient's response to chemotherapy.
If the proposed hypotheses are validated from the analysis, the future objective would be to develop a commercial "kit" that would allow a genetic test based on the aforementioned protein and thus know, thanks to that test, whether the patient is going to respond to chemotherapy or not. All of this would spare the cancer patient the negative side effects in the event that this last treatment is not effective and instead seek other therapeutic alternatives.
“We have seen that cell lines that do not have this protein do not respond to chemotherapy, it does nothing to them. Now we want to see if patients who do not have it or express it little respond to that treatment, ”she says.
The project also wants to see other biomarkers, the so-called "microRNAs" in blood, which would also allow, through a simple analysis, to predict the patient's response to treatment.