Has anyone heard of any PROTAC trials yet?
https://massivesci.com/articles/protac-cancer-melting-proteins-chronic-m...
A team of chemical biologists from Yale University and Oregon Health and Science University, led by Yale postdoctoral researcher George Burslem, have shown that combining an existing cancer drug, imatinib, with a new form of drug that dramatically dissolves disease-causing proteins, can have powerful effects on chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) cancer cells.
Fascinating ...
I wonder if a natural "protac" mechanism can achieve the same thing:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16815497
This is the mechanism I believe may be at work when a person goes into a fasted state (more than one day) repeatedly in driving leukemic stem cells to divide and then get killed while at the same time marking bcr-abl for oblivion.
Fasting induces proteolysis which naturally marks bad proteins (bcr-abl?) for destruction thereby assisting a TKI to decrease tumor load. We already know that fasting can have dramatic positive effects on many cancers. Never a cure - though - just delay to the inevitable. But perhaps coupled with powerful drugs - together, the combo can effect a cure?
Sounds great for those who stop responding to imatinib (or don't respond well initially), but then, we already have options of different TKI's for that. Of course, the more the merrier! But, unfortunately, I don't believe this PROTAC has any bearing on leukemic stem cells, right? So we'd still have to take meds forever, theoretically.
