New ‘virtual experiments’ technique reveals new cancer targets

UK scientists have developed a new means of determining promising new cancer targets using a powerful new online approach.

A team from Cancer Research UK's Cancer Therapeutics Unit at the Institute of Cancer Research used a new tool that allows researchers up to 500 potential drug targets to be compared rapidly in combination with the online database canSAR.

This allowed them to carry out "virtual experiments" to quickly prioritise which are the best targets for new therapies, revealing a total of 46 potentially druggable cancer proteins that have previously been overlooked for drug discovery.

With this technique, scientists all over the world can systematically analyse unprecedented volumes and varieties of data, opening the door for new cancer breakthroughs.

Lead researcher Dr Bissan Al-Lazikani said: "These results show that, using this new approach, we can find targets for cancer drugs in a smarter and faster way than ever before."

The Institute of Cancer Research is a college of the University of London, operated in collaboration with the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, and is recognised as one of the UK's leading academic research centres.