"We need to foster risky projects that can have large rewards"

Synthetic lethality is a promising area of cancer therapy. Anticancer Bioscience (ACB) is a precision oncology company, applying synthetic lethal approaches to develop targeted cancer therapies.

- Ayesha Siddiqui

Dr Jing Zhang, Co-Founder, Vice President, High Throughput and High Content Screening, ACB highlights the main advantages of synthetic lethality, drug programmes at ACB and trends in cancer research. Edited excerpts;

What is Anticancer Bioscience’s competitive edge and what is unique about the pipeline you are developing? 

Anticancer Bioscience (ACB) specialises in the development of synthetic lethal therapies. A synthetic lethal drug interaction occurs when the very same genetic and epigenetic changes that promote cancer, confer unique vulnerabilities to cancer cells. These can include apoptotic, metabolic or mitotic vulnerabilities, among others. Identifying and developing drugs that target these vulnerabilities is extremely difficult, and that is what ACB has fostered expertise in accomplishing.

We have several synthetic lethal drug programmes at ACB, but the most advanced programme aims to produce small molecule therapeutics that are synthetic lethal with hyperactivity of the oncoprotein MYC. Accomplishing this goal has required the development of novel screening methods, new sources of small molecule diversity, and unique synthetic lethality validation assays. ACB’s novel, mechanism-informed phenotypic screening system is capable of guiding the identification and optimisation of lead compounds, and uncovering drug targets and predictive biomarkers. Together, our effort has culminated in the identification of multiple classes of highly potent MYC synthetic lethal compounds that are highly efficacious in vivo and readily orally bioavailable.