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New drug rigosertib leaves cancer cells without energy, destroying them
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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The American Cancer Society estimates that there will be 37,000 deaths from pancreatic cancer in 2012, and 44,000 new cases of this devastating disease. The new drug, rigosertib, allows pancreatic cancer cells to start their replication process and then starves them of energy by freezing them, killing them in the middle of mitosis. Healthy cells are not harmed.
The data from the first phase of clinical trials conducted at the University of Colorado and Onconova Therapeutics (USA) on patients suffering from stages II and III pancreatic cancer turned out to be extremely promising. They can be found in the journal Clinical Cancer Research. Although the goal of any first phase of trials is always to establish the optimally balanced dose (efficacy / severity of side effects), 11 out of 19 patients demonstrated stabilization of their condition and cessation of disease progression.
Instead of obeying and following the natural cell cycle, cancer cells rush by overproducing two factors, PLK1 and PI3K. They allow the cells to literally skip the entire cell cycle and divide much faster. In this way, cancer cells bypass one of the stages of the G1 cell cycle regulatory mechanism, relying entirely on the functionality of PLK1 and PI3K to provide a mad spurt through the replication process.
PLK1 and PI3K are the targets of rigosertib. Without these signaling factors (or if they are turned off), cancer cells are left without energy and die during mitosis. While healthy cells, slowly crawling through their normal natural division cycle, are unaffected by the new drug.
In this way, scientists have managed to seize on the greatest advantage of cancer cells - rapid division - and turn it against them. In addition, this is an extremely rare case when a drug affects the very basis of cellular life, without affecting healthy cells at all. Taxol (Paclitaxel), which has been especially popular for twenty years, also undermines the cellular division mechanism, but does not make any difference between healthy and cancer cells, which leads to rapid aging of the entire organism.