Interview with Prof. Malka Cohen-Armon from Tel Aviv University

Prof. Malka Cohen-Armon and her team at Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine choose Oncotarget for a third time amongst leading medical journals like The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature or The Lancet to publish groundbreaking preclinical cancer research.

Here's more: Recent reports demonstrate an exclusive eradication of a variety of human cancer cells by the modified phenanthridine PJ34. The efficient eradication of malignant cells in human pancreatic cancer xenografts presents a new model of pancreas cancer treatment.

Prof. Malka Cohen-Armon from the Sackler Faculty of Medicine &the Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel-Aviv University in Tel-Aviv, Israel said, "Despite a substantial advance in cancer treatment, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) have a limited response to current treatments, and a low 5-years survival rate of about 6%. "

Furthermore, the authors identified phenanthrenes acting as PARP1 inhibitors that efficiently eradicate a variety of human cancer cells without impairing benign cells.

However, their PARP1 inhibition per-se does not impair nor eradicate human malignant cells, including pancreatic cancer cells, PANC1.

In contrast, at higher concentrations than those causing PARP1 inhibition, PJ34, Tiq-A and Phen eradicate a variety of human cancer cells by mitotic catastrophe cell death.

Here, the efficacy of PJ34 to eradicate human pancreas cancer cells is tested in cell cultures and in xenografts.

In xenografts, eradication of human PANC1 cells deduced from a massive reduction of human proteins in the tumors was measured 30 days after the treatment with PJ34 has been terminated.

The Cohen-Armon Research Team concluded that PJ34, which is permeable in the cell membrane, accessed and eradicated human PDAC cells in xenografts without impairing normal proliferating cells infiltrated into the tumors. The team is 2-3 years away from clinical human trials.

Full text - https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.27268

Correspondence to - Malka Cohen-Armon - marmon@tauex.tau.ac.il

Keywords - PJ34, pancreas cancer, stroma, PANC1 cancer xenografts