New therapeutic strategy for metastatic prostate cancer patients resistant to standard treatment
A team of researchers has identified a combination of drugs that could change the treatment of patients with prostate cancer resistant to the drug docetaxel.
A team of researchers from the Badalona Applied Research Group in Oncology (B·ARGO) and the Urologic Tumours Unit of the Institut Català d'Oncologia (ICO) and the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP) have found a new therapeutic strategy for patients with a specific subtype of metastatic prostate cancer resistant to standard chemotherapy treatment with docetaxel.
In this study, published in the journal Frontiers in Pharmacology, they propose a new treatment based on a combination of kinase inhibitors in patients who inevitably stop responding to docetaxel. The team found that resistance to this drug is associated with the hyperactivation of the cellular pathways PI3K/AKT and MEK/ERK and have explored the possibility of inhibiting these pathways as a new therapeutic strategy in patients who maintain the function of PTEN, a negative regulatory protein of the PI3K/AKT pathway.
The results of the study have been satisfactory and, for this reason, the team wants to conduct a clinical trial to assess the safety and efficacy of this combination in patients with prostate cancer resistant to docetaxel. Vicenç Ruiz de Porras and Adrià Bernat-Peguera, ICO-IGTP researchers and co-first authors of the study, state that the results of this study "open the door to a new therapeutic strategy for those patients with PTEN wild-type tumors, who have progressed to docetaxel and in whom, unlike PTEN null patients, the efficacy of AKT inhibitors in monotherapy has not been demonstrated."
Reference
Ruiz de Porras Vicenç, Bernat-Peguera Adrià, Alcon Clara, Laguia Fernando, Fernández-Saorin Maria, Jiménez Natalia, Senan-Salinas Ana, Solé-Blanch Carme, Feu Andrea, Marín-Aguilera Mercedes, Pardo Juan Carlos, Ochoa-de-Olza Maria, Montero Joan, Mellado Begoña, Font Albert. Dual inhibition of MEK and PI3Kβ/δ-a potential therapeutic strategy in PTEN-wild-type docetaxel-resistant metastatic prostate càncer. Frontiers in Pharmacology. 2024 22 Jan;15. DOI: 10.3389/fphar.2024.1331648.