Model predicts which drugs affect cancer cell metabolism

By inhibiting their unique metabolic signatures, cancer cells can be killed off in a specific and selective manner, said Prof Eytan Ruppin of Tel Aviv University.

The efficacy of this method is said to have been demonstrated in computer and laboratory models pertaining to kidney cancer.

Because the researchers’ new approach is generic, it also holds promise for future investigations aimed at effective drug therapies for other types of cancer.

The researchers’ computer model is a reconstruction of the thousands of metabolic reactions that characterise cancer cells.

By comparing it to a pre-existing model of a normal human cell’s metabolism, they could distinguish the differences between the two and then identify drug targets with the potential to affect the specific, special characteristics of cancer metabolism.

To test their predictions, the researchers chose to target cells from a specific type of renal cancer.

‘In this type of renal cancer, we predicted that using a drug that would specifically inhibit the enzyme HMOX, involved in Heme metabolism, would selectively and efficiently kill cancer cells, leaving normal cells intact,’ said Ruppin. Their computer model led them to hypothesise that the Heme pathway was essential for the cancer cell’s metabolism.