HOX Genes: New Targets for Cancer Therapy
Monday 4 January 2010
Novel ways of targeting and destroying cancer cells is the aim of any cancer researcher. Dr Richard Morgan of the Oncology Group at the Postgraduate Medical School has made significant progress during 2009.
He has expanded on his original observations and shown that blocking the action of HOX genes in a range of different cancers results in cancer cell death. Work has been rewarded by numerous publications and two grant awards from the Breast Cancer Campaign and the Skin Cancer Research Fund. Furthermore, he has entered into a collaboration with Union Life Sciences focusing on developing a whole group of tablet based treatments also based on blocking HOX genes.
Professor Hardev Pandha, Head of the Oncology Group, comments: "These are extremely exciting times as potentially we have a completely novel class of agent which will hopefully be developed clinically to help individual patients."
