Vanderbilt. US: The Lustgarten Foundation has awarded a $1.5 million Research
Investigator Grant to Stephen Fesik, Ph.D., professor of Biochemistry,
Pharmacology and Chemistry, for research designed to discover new drugs
for the treatment of pancreatic cancer. This is Fesik’s second three-year award from the Lustgarten
Foundation in support of his research targeting K-Ras, a protein mutated
in 90 percent of pancreatic cancer cases, as well as other forms of
cancer.Fesik is among 13 scientists nominated by their peers for
significant achievements in the field of pancreatic cancer research who
will receive a total of $19.5 million in research funding from the
foundation.
“I am very happy to receive this award. This will greatly help our
efforts in targeting this horrible disease,” said Fesik, Orrin H. Ingram
II Professor of Cancer Research and co-leader of the Signal
Transduction and Chemical Biology Research Program.
The pancreas is an organ located deep in the abdomen between the
stomach and the spine. It produces juices containing enzymes that help
digest food and also serves as a gland that produces insulin. Since
pancreatic cancer may cause no obvious symptoms in its earliest stages,
the disease is often diagnosed when the cancer is already advanced. Only
6 percent of patients are still alive five years after diagnosis,
making pancreatic cancer one of the most deadly forms of cancer.
The K-Ras protein controls many processes that are important for
tumor cell growth, but it is a challenging protein to target and has
been considered undruggable.
Fesik and his colleagues recently discovered small molecules that
affect the function of K-Ras by binding to a regulatory protein (SOS)
responsible for activating K-Ras. In preliminary testing, the molecules
kill cancer cells by inhibiting Ras signaling.
“We do not yet understand why these small molecules function in this
manner and the compounds are not currently potent enough for use as
pharmaceutical agents. Nevertheless, they represent a promising starting
point for discovering more potent compounds that inhibit K-Ras function
and could be used to treat pancreatic and other Ras-driven types of
cancer,” Fesik said.
He and his colleagues plan to study the mechanism of action of the
compounds and optimize them to inhibit K-Ras signaling and kill
pancreatic tumor cells. In the future, they also plan to examine the
ability of their compounds to shrink pancreatic cancer tumors in animal
studies.
Fesik is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS). In 2010, he received the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) Director’s Pioneer Award for his efforts to revolutionize the
process of drug discovery. He has also received the Lifetime Achievement
Award in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance from the Eastern Analytical Society
as well as the SBS Technology Innovation Award.
The Lustgarten Foundation
is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting research that will
lead to a cure for pancreatic cancer. Inspired by Marc Lustgarten, vice
chair of Cablevision and chair of Madison Square Garden in New York
City, the foundation was launched in 1999.
Lustgarten, who served on the initial board of directors for the foundation, died from pancreatic cancer at 52.