Chemotherapy has been the backbone of cancer treatment for decades, but it comes with a cost that patients know too well. Because most chemotherapy drugs cannot distinguish between cancerous and healthy cells, they damage both — causing hair loss, severe fatigue, nausea, weakened immunity, and a range of other side effects that can be as debilitating as the disease itself.
The search for a more precise alternative — one that zeroes in on cancer cells while sparing the rest — has driven cancer research for years.
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) in Varanasi have now published findings that bring that goal measurably closer.
A team led by Professor Vikas Kumar Dubey from the Department of Biochemical Engineering, along with scholars Shivkumar and Raj Bahadur Singh, has identified a chemical compound that selectively targets breast cancer cells, restricts their growth, and pushes them towards self-destruction without affecting healthy tissue in laboratory conditions.
Finding one molecule among millions
Dubey and his team spent nearly one and a half years developing a new anticancer drug candidate. During the study, they analysed millions of chemical compounds in the ZINC database and identified a promising molecule, ZINC-000002107582.
Breast cancer cases in India increased steadily from 200,218 in 2019 to 221,579 in 2023, with deaths rising from 74,481 to 82,429 during the same period. Photograph: (The Scroll)
The ZINC database is a publicly available repository of commercially available compounds widely used in drug discovery research. Computational screening of its contents — using techniques that model how molecules interact with biological targets — is a recognised method for identifying leads that would otherwise take decades to find through traditional means.
Laboratory tests of the compound on breast cancer cells produced encouraging results. The significance of this is considerable.
Breast cancer cases in India increased steadily from 200,218 in 2019 to 221,579 in 2023, with deaths rising from 74,481 to 82,429 during the same period.
It is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among Indian women, and despite advances in treatment, late-stage detection remains a serious challenge.
How the compound works
The research team found that the compound interferes with two key proteins, UVRAG and BAX, which play crucial roles in cancer cell survival and proliferation.
These proteins help cancer cells remain alive and multiply rapidly by ensuring a continuous supply of nutrients. The newly identified compound disrupts the interaction between UVRAG and BAX by breaking their binding mechanism.
The consequence of that disruption is direct. Cancer cells are deprived of essential nutrients, causing their growth to stall before they gradually become inactive and die.
A team led by Professor Vikas Kumar Dubey from the Department of Biochemical Engineering has identified a chemical compound that selectively targets breast cancer cells, restricts their growth, and pushes them towards self-destruction Photograph: (IIT BHU)
The compound also has a second line of action: it increases levels of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) within cancer cells, creating excessive cellular stress that triggers a self-destruction process, ultimately eliminating them.
In effect, the compound both starves the cancer cell and activates its self-destruct mechanism — two independent pathways working towards the same outcome.
What still lies ahead
The findings were published in the journal Biochemistry, a publication of the American Chemical Society, and the team has also filed a patent application for the compound.
Professor Dubey noted that, unlike conventional chemotherapy, the compound acts specifically on cancer-affected cells, which could make future treatments both more effective and significantly less distressing for patients.
That said, the compound has so far been tested only on breast cancer cells under laboratory conditions. Before it can be developed into a medicine for patients, it must undergo animal testing followed by human clinical trials.
The distance between a promising laboratory result and a viable drug is long, and the path through clinical trials is rigorous. But early-stage research of this kind — identifying a precise molecular target, demonstrating selective action in laboratory conditions, and publishing peer-reviewed findings — is exactly where that journey begins.
For a disease that claims tens of thousands of Indian lives every year, a compound that attacks cancer on its own terms, without collateral damage, is a development worth watching.
