MYC is a transcription factor that is dysregulated in over 70% of human cancers, making it an important target that unfortunately, has been deemed “undruggable” for many years. Although synthetic lethality has offered a promising parallel approach that targets MYC-dependent vulnerabilities in cancer, there is still no targeted synthetic lethality therapy against MYC-driven cancers that has been approved for clinical use. A major challenge to getting MYC synthetic lethality targets into clinical settings is the need to prioritize targets by therapeutic potential for each MYC-driven cancer type due to the dissimilarities of tumors in each type.
Taking into account the need for target prioritization and an increase in the exploration of combination therapies against MYC-driven cancers, the researchers in this study used KYAN’s experimental–analytical hybrid platform to find MYC synthetic lethal targets with the greatest therapeutic potential and compared their therapeutic value to current standard-of-care drugs in MYC-driven hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The researchers further utilized technology from KYAN and the Agency of Science, Technology & Research (A*STAR)’s Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) to identify a two-drug combination of novel splice-switch oligonucleotides (SSOs) as promising therapeutic candidates for MYC-driven HCC.
“We are thrilled that our collaboration with IMCB is already generating such exciting results,” said Hugo Saavedra, CEO of KYAN Therapeutics. “Being able to aid drug discovery is yet another valuable tool that helps us to build solutions for better cancer care.”