Wild optimism or new breakthrough?

A small Israeli research firm claimed it had found a cure for all cancers

In late January, a small Israeli research firm claimed it had found a magic bullet that could cure all cancers. What’s more, the scientists said that the new treatment would be available for human trials by early 2020. 

This is extraordinary on many counts. There are over 200 different types of cancer. Each requires different modes of diagnosis and treatment, and the rates of remission also vary widely. Apart from this, any medical treatment takes 10-15 years to progress from first lab experiments, to clinical trials on animals, to trials on human beings, followed by clearance from regulatory agencies before it is safe for use on patients. 

Accelerated Evolution Biotech­nologies Ltd. (AEBi), a private biopharma firm, based in Ness Ziona, Israel, has been at the centre of a storm ever since it made this claim. Scientists around the world have greeted the announcement with great scepticism.

Such claims should always be backed up with peer-reviewed papers and clinical trial data. This is not the case for AEBi, which says it has tested the approach in clinical trials on mice but not published any paper yet. 

The public statements contain both metaphor and hyperbole. The treatment has been dubbed the “MuTaTo” or Multi-Target Toxin by AEBi. The chief executive officer, Dr Ilan Morad, claimed in an interview that “We create a multiple attack on cancer. Think of the arms of an octopus. The octopus, in this case, is the MuTaTo molecule, and at the end of each arm (of the molecule) there are peptides that interact with the (cancer) proteins and inhibit their action.” That interaction allows “toxic peptides” attached to the “octopus” to penetrate cancer cells and kill them.

The hype may contain an idea, which could potentially be useful in fighting cancer. An amino acid is a simple organic compound, combining an amine (NH2) and a carboxyl group (COOH) along with some other stuff. Amino acids are precursors to life since they are formed inorganically (comets contain them) and they are building blocks from which proteins are formed. A peptide is a molecule containing two or more strings of amino acids in combination.

Cancer cells express characteristic proteins (a protein is like a big, complex peptide, containing many amino acid chains). Peptides can be toxic to cancer cells, if they can identify and target those specific proteins in cancer cells. But if a cancer cell is being attacked by a specific peptide, it may mutate that “target protein” to avoid being hit in future.

The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology was awarded to James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo “for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation”. The duo found a couple of proteins in cancer cells that inhibited attacks by the immune system. Peptides may be able to recognise and knock out those “immune checkpoints”. After that, the cancer cell would be vulnerable to attack.

The MuTaTo approach is to combine several cancer-targeting peptides along with a strong toxin that kills cancer cells. By using at least three targeting peptides along with a strong toxin, AEBi is trying to ensure that the treatment will not be bypassed by future mutations.

Some cancer tumours also erect biological shields, which prevent access by large molecules, such as antibodies. The MuTaTo approach creates multi-pronged tentacles that can penetrate such shields. Morad said that the MuTaTo peptides are very small (12 amino acids long) and lack rigid structure, allowing to flexibly bypass shields. AEBi says it has finished its first exploratory mice experiment, which inhibited cancer cell growth while not affecting healthy mice cells.

The clinical process would now consist of testing in other animal species, before being formulated and approved to administration in Phase I clinical trials in humans. The problems with AEBi’s claims arise on several grounds. Apart from the lack of proof, the “multi approach” is actually standard in chemotherapy and it doesn’t always prevent the cancer mutating to avoid being killed. So it’s not such a revolutionary approach and of course, one-size fits all cures do seem very unlikely.

So, is this wild optimism? Is it a genuine new breakthrough? Or is it just a cynical attempt to raise money by a little-known company? One must wait and see. But the Israel’s Advanced Technology Industries, the national lobby group and umbrella organisation of the high-tech and life science industries has condemned the claims as “irresponsible” and “damaging to the reputation of Israel’s life science industry”.