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Colorectal cancer is the most frequently diagnosed in the Spanish population 34,331 cases detected in 2017).

With respect to mortality, it is the second behind the lung with 15,923 deaths per year.

Different research groups in the Region of Murcia have developed, during the last three years, a joint project to investigate new treatments for this very frequent cancer.

The consortium formed by researchers from the UCAM, the Murcian Institute of Biosanitary Research (IMIB-Arrixaca) and the Santa Lucía General University Hospital, with the collaboration of the University of Granada and the University of Oulu in Finland, has recently discovered that a drug approved for another indication has antitumor action on colon cancer cells.

The group has shown that this compound, which is currently used as a psychotropic drug, has the ability to block a protein involved in tumor invasion.

For this, the research team, using bioinformatics, biophysical, biochemical and cellular techniques, has been able to observe that the drug stops the migration and invasion of colon cancer tumor cells in human tissues and in zebrafish larvae.

This finding has led to the creation of a patent that has already been deposited by the members of this multidisciplinary research group, led by the team from Murcia.

Dr. Pablo Concesa, principal investigator of the project, pharmaceutical specialist in Clinical Analysis of the University Hospital Santa Lucia, responsible for the group of Molecular Pathology and Pharmacogenetics of IMIB-Arrixaca and professor of the Degree in Medicine of the UCAM, explains that currently the group is working with the first tests on rodent cellular invasion models, after the success observed in models in zebrafish.

"The results open up the possibility of treating certain types of very aggressive tumors and with scarce therapeutic options, the advantage of which the drug is already approved by the regulatory agencies is that it has the tests that show that it is safe, which facilitates the development of clinical trials

Researchers involved in the project

Accompanying Dr. Pablo Conesa in this regional team are Dr. Horacio Pérez Sánchez, principal investigator of the Structural and Supercomputing Bioinformatics Group (BIO-HPC) (UCAM);

Dr. Silvia Montoro, from the Cardiovascular Risk Research Group (UCAM);

Ms. Begoña Alburquerque, predoctoral student (UCAM);

Drs. Ángel Bernabé García and Francisco José Nicolás Villaescusa of the Regeneration Group, molecular oncology and TGF-ß (IMIB-Arrixaca) and Drs. Manuel Bernabé García and María Luisa Cayuela of the Aging, Cancer and Teloerase Group (IMIB-Arrixaca).

Source: UCAM