GROUNDBREAKER
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reating cancer can be like trying to hit a moving target. Tumours can recruit new blood supplies and spread, setting up camp in different sites around the body. Over time they can also develop resistance to treatments that would previously have killed them. Professor Tracy Robson, Head of Molecular & Cellular Theraputics at RCSI, has a plan of twopronged attack: boost the body’s own mechanisms to keep tumours from building a blood supply and to coax the cells that could become resistant to remain vulnerable to anti-cancer drugs.
Natural game-changer
Professor Tracy Robson is accelerating her research on a new drug to tackle cancer and possibly other diseases too. Dr Claire O’Connell spoke to her about her move to RCSI.
Professor Robson’s approach centres on a naturally occurring protein in the body called FKBPL. “I’ve become very familiar with it as I’ve been working on it for more than two decades now,” she says. “We have shown that this molecule prevents tumour blood vessel growth and it also acts on cancer stem cells in tumours, making them more susceptible to treatment.” Her work on the protein in a previous position at Queen’s University Belfast led to the development of a potential new drug for cancer patients.
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Called ALM201, it has been developed in collaboration with a drug company Almac Discovery and put through its paces in a ‘first in man’ early clinical trial in humans in the UK. “That has been going very well,” says Professor Robson of the trial. “ALM201 was administered to late-stage cancer patients who had failed all other therapies, in order to assess its safety, tolerability and kenetics of this peptide in the human body. The first phase in human trials has just
