Granted financing to the tune of €2.5 million over four years, researcher Gonçalo Bernardes, coordinator of the project, explained to Lusa News Agency that “the drugs that are currently used cannot distinguish between a healthy cell and a cancer cell.”
Therefore, he elaborated, what the consortium intends to do is “combine these drugs with molecules called antibodies, which are specific for molecules that are present on the surface of cancer cells and thus directing conventional drugs to the cancer cells.”
Bernardes, coordinator for the Lisbon Molecular Medicine Institute’s (IMML) Laboratory for Chemical and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, said if the concentration of toxic drugs can be increased in the tumour without affecting healthy cells, the efficiency of the treatment and elimination of the cancer cells is also increased.
The work group, which comprises between 30 and 40 members, hopes to have this new treatment used as a first line of medication in the treatment of cancer, and of any type of cancer, given its state of development.
Its 2.5 million funding, granted through the EU Marie Curie Actions programme, will allow a new class of molecules to be created – antibodies combined with toxic molecules – and for them to be tested on lab rats.
Academic institutions and pharmaceutical laboratories from Portugal, Spain, the UK, France, Germany and Switzerland make up the consortium. Portugal is represented by the IMML and by the Lisbon Faculty for Pharmacy.