A Hunter medical study has exposed a new linchpin in melanoma survival sparking an all-new generation of targeted and long-lasting drugs for the killer skin cancer.
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University of Newcastle cancer professor Xu Dong Zhang said the lethal double-life of a protein known as RIP1 had previously been linked to naturally occurring cell death in the body, but little attention had been paid to its pro-survival function in melanoma cells.
“We started investigating RIP1 from a perspective of necrotic cell death before finding that it actually plays an important role in regulating melanoma cell survival ... we had to turn our entire thinking around,” Professor Zhang said.
“It appears to be up-regulated [have elevated levels] from the earliest stages of melanoma.
“So if we can inhibit the molecule’s survival mechanism, we believe we’ll be able to kill melanoma cells, either alone or in combination with existing drugs.”
In results published in the US journal Cancer Research, Professor Zhang claimed the protein drove melanoma proliferation independently of other oncogenic (cancer causing) factors such as genetic mutations.
The new finding has drawn widespread attention from other research institutes, including cell biologists at the Paris Descartes University, and is likely to lead to future collaborations.
