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Researcher to talk about breast cancer work |
| By
Vicki L. Kroll |
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Oct 1, 2007 |
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Dr. Paul Erhardt, director of the UT Center for Drug Design and Development and professor of medicinal and biological chemistry, will give an update on his research on breast cancer.
His talk, “Directing Drug Distribution (Avoiding Multidrug Resistance While Targeting Cancer Cells),” will take place Thursday, Oct. 4, at noon in Nitchske Hall Room 1027 on Main Campus.
Using the chemotherapy drug Paclitaxel that is prescribed to treat some types of cancer, Erhardt has outlined negative structure activity relationships that can be exploited to avoid the P-glycoprotein transporter, a pump that keeps harmful substances out of cells.
“The P-glycoprotein transporter is associated to a large extent with the development of multidrug resistance in human breast cancer cells,” he said.
He is investigating the structural space taken up by these negative structure activity relationships, which overlap areas that can improve water solubility and that are present in certain molecules being explored for their potential to target cancer cells.
“Combining these overlapping features into various hybrid attachments, we are presently synthesizing Paclitaxel analogues that will simultaneously display increased aqueous solubility, enhanced selectivity for cancer cells compared to normal cells, and a significantly decreased liability for the development of multidrug resistance,” Erhardt said.
This research is vital to combat breast cancer so that anti-tumor agents do not succumb to multidrug resistance but instead combat the malignancy.
Erhardt’s work previously was supported by the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
In 2006, he received one of UT’s Outstanding Researcher Awards, and he also has been recognized with the College of Pharmacy’s Outstanding Faculty Member Award and Outstanding Researcher Award.
His free, public talk will be a graduate seminar for the Chemical and Environmental Engineering Department.
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