Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University, have developed a novel class of drugs that target key drivers of cancer progression and, when combined with immunotherapy, eliminated multiple types of tumors in preclinical models.
A central component of this discovery was the work of Alexander MacKerell Jr., PhD, Grollman-Glick Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and his group within the School’s Computer-Aided Drug Design Center, of which he is director. Using SILCS, a structure-based computational approach, the team identified small molecules capable of binding to both hypoxia-inducible factors 1 and 2 (HIF-1/2) – transcription factors widely considered “master regulators” of cancer progression.
Read the full story on the School of Pharmacy's website.