Associate Prof Allan Gamble received a Health Research Council grant of $1,199,997 last year, which his team has used to develop the new treatment focused on bioorthogonal prodrugs, and he believed it could change the lives of cancer patients.
"Cancer drugs are designed to kill cancerous cells, but are also toxic to other cells, giving rise to mild or even life-threatening side-effects," he said.
"One way to improve tumour killing and reduce these side-effects is to selectively deliver the anti-cancer drug directly to the tumour location in a deactivated form.
"This is known as a prodrug."
Essentially, he has created synthetic cancer-killing molecules using a type of chemistry called bioorthogonal click chemistry.
"When you do a normal chemical reaction, in very simple terms, you mix things together, you might heat them or add different ingredients, and then you synthesise your molecules.
"In this case, we are doing that chemistry in a living system — inside the body.
"So we have two chemicals that are very specific for each other.
"One is guided to the tumour and it sticks to the cancer cells, which makes the cancer cells very different to all the other cells in the body.
"The second, the prodrug, which is an inactive form of cancer-killing drug, is injected and will only ‘click’ with the first drug on the cancer cells and they mix inside the body.
"It will only be activated at the tumour site."
He said it meant people with cancer would not suffer side-effects as much as those receiving chemotheraphy could.
"Some patients may not get any side-effects, or very, very minor side effects. It’s all patient-specific."
He had high hopes of developing the therapy to target colorectal cancer.
He said New Zealand had one of the highest rates of colorectal cancer, globally, and had a high disparity for Māori patients.
All going well, he said the treatment would soon undergo pre-clinical trials.
"After this pre-clinical project, we hope that the strategy can find further scope as a general cancer-targeting approach for chemotherapy."
Finding new strategies to treat cancer would lead to better treatment options for cancer patients, especially those with late-stage disease where options could be limited, he said.
The cost of cancer treatment, especially with newly approved drugs, could be prohibitive.
So his research team hoped their research could lead to more affordable treatment options for patients.
