Drug screening reveals new anti-cancer compound

Using an accelerated drug screening process, researchers have discovered a previously unknown molecule that kills cancer cells.

The finding also brought to light that that new cancer drug candidates can be identified faster and at lower cost by using computer-assisted and cell-based screening of compounds, said Marko Kallio, a research scientist at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.

The researchers conducted a computer-assisted screening of 65,000 compounds and cell-based assays on the 150 highest scoring hit compounds, before identifying the Cent-1 molecule.

The Cent-1 molecule kills cancer cells through a mechanism similar to that of the template drug Rigosertib that is currently under commercial development.

However, since the chemical structure of the Cent-1 compound differs from Rigosertib, there are no major obstacles to further development.

The study appeared in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.