Funded by The Little Princess Trust and administered by CCLG
Lead investigator: Prof Karim Malik, University of Bristol
Award: £229,004.10
Awarded July 2023
Many cancers, such as Wilms tumour (a type of childhood kidney cancer), occur because the cells contain too many growth-promoting proteins, called oncoproteins. Reducing the amount of oncoproteins with medicines can often effectively treat cancer. In Wilms’ tumour, the cancer depends mostly on an oncoprotein called MYCN.
MYCN is known to rely on another protein found in cancer cells known as ’protein arginine methyltransferase 5’ (PRMT5). Professor Karim Malik’s lab at the University of Bristol has conducted research into neuroblastoma, another type of childhood cancer, that showed that stopping PRMT5 from working can counter the growth-promoting effects of MYCN.
Recently, medicines that can inhibit PRMT5 have become available, and Professor Malik has found that these could significantly slow the growth of Wilms tumour cells. In particular, combining two different PRMT inhibitors causes Wilms tumour cell death.
Not only could this form a new treatment for high-risk Wilms tumour, but it could also be safer and more effective due to it being a combination treatment where each drug is given at a lower dose.
In this project, Professor Malik plans to use cancer cells grown from patient samples and other models of Wilms tumour to understand how proteins like PRMT5 work in Wilms tumours, what they do, and how medicines targeting these proteins can lead to cancer cell death.