Very exciting day to see this amazing work by the lab of Prof.Neil Watkins published in the prestigious Science Translational Medicine Journal.
A huge amount of work for a lot of very talented people over many many years went into this study, and hopefully it will result in significant improvements for the treatment of lung cancer patients using platinum based chemotherapies. You can access the fully article here [Link]
Platinum-based chemotherapy is a mainstay of treatment for lung cancer, but resistance to this therapy is a common problem, as are dose-limiting side effects, particularly kidney toxicity. To search for mechanisms that may contribute to treatment resistance, Marini et al. performed a whole-genome RNA interference screen and identified the activin pathway, which can be targeted. The authors demonstrated that inhibition of this pathway using a small molecule or a protein called follistatin can offer a dual benefit in that it potentiates the effects of platinum drugs in mouse models of cancer and also protects the animals from kidney damage. These findings suggest that activin inhibitors could be a valuable addition to platinum chemotherapy, enhancing the efficacy of treatment while also allowing the use of higher doses or longer periods of drug exposure.
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