Dr Scott Cohen
The University of Sydney
$440,047
2025 - 2028
The Research
Approximately ~90% of all cancers have activated the enzyme telomerase to confer cellular immortality, thereby sustaining their unlimited proliferation. Small-molecule 'telomerase inhibitors' have been a promising therapeutic approach to cancer therapy for almost three decades, yet no such compounds have reached the clinic.
Our team has developed two small-molecule telomerase inhibitors which we aim to advance towards clinical trials. Given that (i) standard-of-care chemotherapeutic agents work by damaging DNA, and (ii) DNA repair mechanisms and telomerase action are interconnected, we hypothesise that co-administration of chemotherapeutic agents with our telomerase inhibitors will result in therapeutic synergy. Therapeutic synergy may lead to improved treatment regimens, wherein standard-of-care chemotherapeutics can be used at lower, and hence safer, doses than are currently applied.
This project will establish the mechanism by which DNA damage-inducing chemotherapeutics synergise with telomerase inhibitors to induce rapid cancer cell death in culture and in preclinical mouse tumour models
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