This study explores a novel strategy for treating BRAF-mutant bowel cancer by deliberately overstimulating cancer growth pathways to trigger cell death. Using laboratory models and existing drugs, the researchers aim to develop a new treatment approach that could be rapidly translated into clinical practice.
What issue does this study address?
Around 10% of bowel cancers have alterations in a protein called BRAF, and these patients often respond poorly to treatment and have worse outcomes than other bowel cancer patients. Most current treatments attempt to switch off the signals that tell cancer cells to grow.
What are the aims and how could this work help people with bowel cancer?
This project will test a different idea. Instead of only turning these growth signals off, researchers will explore whether turning them on further can kill cancer cells.
One way to think about this is like an electrical circuit: if too much electricity flows through it, the system overloads and fails. Cancer cells that depend strongly on growth signals may already be close to their “overload” limit, therefore pushing the signal even higher could cause too much stress for the cell to survive. Another simple example is a balloon: if you keep blowing air into it, it will eventually pop.
The team will focus on reusing existing drugs that can increase these growth signals, combining them with standard treatments in carefully timed “see-saw” schedules. They will test this approach in laboratory models that closely match real patient tumours to see if it can kill bowel cancer cells.
The goal of this work is to develop a new treatment strategy for bowel cancer patients with BRAF alterations using existing drugs, so that the findings can help patients as quickly as possible.
The research team
This research will be led by Dr Erica Oliveira at Institute of Cancer Research.