Scientists develop nano-new drugs or can effectively treat breast cancer

Medical Network January 26 In the early clinical trials, small molecule inhibitors targeting mTORC2 kinase showed a certain therapeutic effect. However, inhibitors such as torkinibs not only inhibit mTORC2 activity but also mTORC1. Recently, some reports have found that the combined inhibition of mTORC1/mTORC2 may lead to the loss of negative feedback regulation mechanism of PI3K, promote the occurrence of autophagy and macrocytosis, which contributes to the survival of cancer cells. Transgenic animal models have shown that selective inhibition of mTORC2 can effectively prevent breast cancer, but the lack of specific inhibitors targeting mTORC2 is currently unable to further validate the above hypothesis.

In a recent study published in the international academic journal Cancer Research, researchers from Vanderbilt University in Germany developed an RNAi treatment based on nanoparticles that effectively silences the Rictor molecules necessary for the mTORC2 complex. The results show that treatment of HER2-positive breast tumors with this drug can down-regulate Akt phosphorylation in cancer cells and enhance the killing effect on tumor cells. Specific inhibition of mTORC2 in animal models, combined with the use of the HER2 inhibitor lapatinib, can inhibit the growth of HER2-positive breast cancer, the effect is better than the drug alone, which indicates that mTORC2 promotes the resistance of tumor cells to lapatinib, and inhibition of mTORC2 can solve this problem. problem.

Importantly, the researchers found that selective inhibition of mTORC2 is also effective in treating triple-negative breast cancer models, downregulating Akt phosphorylation to inhibit tumor growth, and that RICTOR mRNA expression levels are significantly different from those of basal-like triple-negative breast cancer patients. Correlation.

Overall, these results provide preclinical validation of this new RNAi delivery platform, which can be used to inhibit gene expression in breast cancer. The results also suggest that selective targeting of mTORC2 is feasible for the treatment of breast cancer. Effective.