Associate Professor Allan Gamble (centre) with Dr Sushant Aryal (left) and Julia Camilli, who are the postdoc and PhD candidate working on the project.
A novel way to deliver anti-cancer medication could change the lives of cancer patients forever, according to Otago Associate Professor Allan Gamble.
Based in the School of Pharmacy, Allan received a Health Research Council grant of $1,199,997 last year so that his team could develop a new way to deliver anti-cancer medicines that both increases the tumour-selective activity of drug and reduces chemotherapy side effects. Their research focuses on bioorthogonal prodrugs.
“Cancer drugs are designed to kill cancerous cells but are also toxic to other cells, giving rise to mild or even life-threatening side-effects,” Allan says.
“One way to improve tumour killing and reduce these side effects is to selectively deliver the anti-cancer drug directly to the tumour location in a deactivated form – this is known as a prodrug.”
“The prodrug is then only activated once it is in the cancer environment.”
To explain bioorthogonal chemistry, Allan uses the analogy of two friends separated by thousands of people at a concert.
For the friends to reach each other they need to carefully navigate through the crowd without getting injured, much like the synthetic chemical reaction that happens in bioorthogonal chemistry.
Achieving this is not easy as it needs to occur amongst all the other molecules that exist in a living biological system, but he has high hopes for the bioorthogonal prodrug his team are developing to target colorectal cancer.
Their research involves introducing a tumour-targeted reagent (chemical) that makes those tumour cells different to other cells so that the prodrug that is then administered can navigate the complex biological environment and find its reaction partner, or friend at the concert, for activation at the tumour site.
Finding new strategies to treat cancer will lead to better treatment options for cancer patients, especially those with late-stage disease where options can be limited.
The cost of cancer treatment, especially with newly approved drugs, can be prohibitive and so Allan’s team hopes their research into novel strategies like this could lead to more affordable treatment options for patients.
“Our research aims to develop a treatment for colorectal cancer, for which New Zealand has one of the highest rates globally and has a high disparity for Māori patients,” he says.
“After this pre-clinical project, we hope that the strategy can find further scope as a general cancer-targeting approach for chemotherapy.”
Allan had two passions growing up – rugby league and science. In the end science won and he completed a Bachelor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Wollongong, followed by a PhD in 2008 on the synthesis of anti-viral agents.
He then took up a postdoctoral fellowship at the Australian National University and Stanford University where his interest in cancer chemotherapy and drug delivery flourished. By 2012, he was given the opportunity to establish his own independent research group at the University of Otago.
Allan says a multidisciplinary project like this one could not be done without the support of his research team including Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Sushant Aryal and PhD candidate Julia Camilli.
He also acknowledges the support offered by collaborators Professor Sarah Hook and Professor Parry Guilford, who bring years of experience in cancer biology to the research.
– Kōrero by the Division of Health Sciences Communications Adviser, Kelsey Swart.