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New conjugate fibroblast growth factor FGF1

Cytostatic agents are a group of drugs used in the cancer treatment. Unfortunately, many of them are highly cytotoxic and cannot be used alone due to their harmful systemic effects and causing a wide range of side effects. The latest cancer treatments are mostly based on targeted therapies, which use specific proteins on the surface of cancer cells that are absent (or present in significantly smaller amounts) in healthy cells. Their use enables more selective and effective distribution of the drug to the affected area. However, this is not an ideal system; antibodies are relatively large, which makes their modification difficult. Moreover, they often show affinity to more than one molecular target, thus reducing the specificity of therapy.

In the Department of Protein Engineering at the Faculty of Biotechnology, under the leadership of Professor Jacek Otlewski, an alternative method of drug delivery to tumour cells has been developed using a conjugate of a mutated variant of fibroblastic growth factor FGF1. Increased expression of fibroblastic growth factor receptors has been observed in many cancers, including breast, prostate, bladder, as well as in lung cancer. The use of specific ligands for FGF receptors creates an opportunity to develop diagnostic or therapeutic methods in these tumours. Growth factors are highly selective and, in addition, are smaller in size than antibodies, which means that they may have greater potential as targeting molecules than immunoglobulins.