Wonder Drug Unlikely for Cancer

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No wonder-drug likely for cancer, says Nobel scientist

Thursday August 31, 2006

By Errol Kiong

Smarter drugs for fighting cancer will begin to emerge as more is

understood about cancer cells - but don't expect a wonder drug that

cures all forms of cancer, says a leading international researcher.

Nobel Laureate Sir Tim Hunt, principal scientist at Cancer Research

UK and keynote speaker at the Queenstown Molecular Biology Meeting,

said an improved understanding of the way cancer cells divided and

grew had already yielded smart drugs such as Glivec and Herceptin.

But he says the discovery of the cancer-fighting equivalent of

penicillin is unlikely.

" Once you have that kind of example of a magic wonder drug, [people

think] 'well, gosh there must be wonder drugs for every kind of human

disease'. It's raised the bar awfully high, " he said.

" Basically cancer cells grow using all the same mechanisms that

normal cells in the body use. So you could stop the cancer cell

growing by standing the right distance from an atom bomb, but then

all your other cells also stop growing at the same time. "

A well-designed drug compound would need to target only cancerous

cells, while leaving normal cells unharmed.

But the understanding thus far of cancerous cells had not yielded the

clinical results promised in the laboratory, although two, Glivec and

Herceptin, were cited as examples of a promising new generation of

cancer drugs.

Sir Tim said Glivec was initially tested on very rare tumours, but

by " good luck " was found to be effective in some more common cancers,

such as chronic myeloid leukaemia, which was previously untreatable.