1-2 punch strategy against bacteria and cancer

Cancer researchers from Rice University suggest that a new man-made drug that's already proven effective at killing cancer and drug-resistant bacteria could best deliver its knockout blow when used in combination with drugs made from naturally occurring toxins.

"One of the oldest tricks in fighting is the one-two punch - you distract your opponent with one attack and deliver a knockout blow with another," said José Onuchic of Rice's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP). "Combinatorial drug therapies employ that strategy at a cellular level.

"A wealth of research in recent years has shown that both cancer and bacteria can mount sophisticated, coordinated defenses against almost any drug," said Onuchic, Rice's Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics and Astronomy, professor of chemistry, and biochemistry and cell biology. "By combining drugs, particularly those that place stress on different parts of the cell, we expect it will be possible to knock out either cancer cells or bacteria while simultaneously inhibiting their ability to become drug-resistant."

Onuchic and CTBP colleagues Eshel Ben-Jacob and Patricia Jennings reached their conclusions after analyzing several studies on anti-microbial peptides (AMPs), corkscrew-shaped chains of amino acids that kill Gram-negative bacteria. The CTBP team's ideas appear this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) as a commentary on new findings from MD Anderson Cancer Center about a promising synthetic AMP called D-KLAKLAK-2. In its new research, MD Anderson researchers found D-KLAKLAK-2, which was already known to kill cancer cells, is also an effective drug against antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative bacteria.

"AMPs are produced naturally by a number of animals to fight bacteria," said Ben-Jacob, professor of biochemistry and cell biology at Rice and the Maguy-Glass Chair in Physics of Complex Systems and professor of physics and astronomy at Tel Aviv University. "AMPs are corkscrew-shaped. They do not harm the animals' own cells, but they penetrate and shred the double-layered membranes of Gram-negative bacteria."

Gram-negative bacteria are a class of pathogens that includes drug-resistant varieties of bacteria that cause pneumonia, sepsis and other deadly diseases.

Ben-Jacob said cancer researchers have previously shown that they can tag AMPs with special "marker" molecules that allow the AMPs to penetrate and kill cancer cells. The markers allow the AMPs to be taken inside the cancer cells, something they cannot normally do.

"Once inside the cancer cells, the AMPs target and damage the cell's power plant, an organelle called the mitochondria, which has a double-layered membrane that is remarkably similar to that of Gram-negative bacteria," he said.

Though research has shown that AMPs can kill cancer cells, scientists are concerned that cancer cells could develop resistance to the compounds. In part, this concern arises from the fact that AMPs are fairly common in nature and that some organisms already have genetic mutations that allow them to evade AMP attacks.