Despite significant progress, lung cancer remains the nation’s leading cause of cancer related deaths. Recently, the Jacks Lab from MIT has unveiled a new repurposed drug candidate for a form of aggressive lung cancer called small cell lung cancer (SCLC). This exciting result comes from a 5,000 gene CRISPR knock out model in mice where they discovered the enzyme, dihydroorotate dehydrogenase (DHODH) is one of the major contributors to SCLC. They then tested DHODH-blocking drugs, including one called brequinar, and found that mice with SCLC on brequinar have a greater life expectancy as compared to the control mice with SCLC. Of course, as the paper suggests, mice are not people, but this is nonetheless an impactful finding that may hold the key to treating SCLC in humans.
https://directorsblog.nih.gov/author/collinsfs/
