A compound discovered and developed by a team of Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers that halts cancer in animals with Ewing sarcoma and prostate cancer appears to work against some forms of leukemia, too. The team's latest work, with Austrian colleagues and including this leukemia finding, was published online on October 8, 2015 in an open-access article in Oncotarget. The compound is YK-4-279, the first drug targeted at similar chromosomal translocations found in Ewing sarcoma, prostate cancer, and in some forms of leukemia. Translocations occur when two normal genes break off from a chromosome and fuse together in a new location. This fusion can produce new genes that code for proteins, which can then push cancer cells to become more aggressive and spread. One of those proteins is EWS-FLI1. YK-4-279 appears effective in controlling the cancer promoting functions of EWS-FLI1. The Oncotarget article is titled “YK-4-279 Effectively Antagonizes EWS-FLI1 Induced Leukemia in a Transgenic Mouse Model.” "EWS-FLI1 is already known to drive a rare, but deadly, bone cancer called Ewing sarcoma, which occurs predominantly in children, teens, and young adults," says Aykut Üren (photo), M.D., Professor of Molecular Oncology at Georgetown Lombardi. "It also appears to drive cancer cell growth in some prostate cancers." In this new study led by Dr. Üren and colleagues, mice with EWS-FLI1-driven leukemia were given injections of YK-4-279 five days per week for two weeks and compared with untreated mice. By the end of the first week, the mice receiving YK-4-279 had much lower numbers of leukemia cells.Login Or Register To Read Full Story