Childhood Cancer ResearchCPRIT Funds Support West Texas Pharmacology Core
To highlight the importance of pharmacology in developing new cancer drugs, including those for children, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) recently awarded Min Kang, PharmD, a five-year grant of $3.37 million. She is a pediatrics professor in the School of Medicine.
When a person takes a drug, they need to know how much to take to benefit from the drug’s effect without experiencing serious toxicities. The dose also can vary from person to person because each person has different levels of the enzymes that metabolize the drug. That is one of the reasons the average time for a drug to be fully developed is 15 years. Kang said pharmacology data is utilized in making go or no-go decisions in the early stages of drug development.
“Let’s take Benadryl as an example,” Kang explains. “Some people who take Benadryl, including myself, experience extreme drowsiness. In my case, the effect lasts two days. On the other hand, my colleague says Benadryl does nothing to him. This is because he and I have differences in the level of the enzyme that breaks down Benadryl.”
Pharmacology analyses and expertise are critical components of cancer drug development. Kang says that’s because the cost to bring a new cancer drug to market is currently estimated to be $1 billion, and only one of 5,000 compounds entering the discovery stage will eventually receive U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval.
Kang says pediatric cancer studies will be a priority for the West Texas Pharmacology Core.
“Children are not small adults; their physiology is different from adults, and thus their response to drugs may be different from that of adults,” Kang says. “Despite the difference, very few studies are done on pediatric cancer patients. The current core will support clinical and preclinical studies to understand the issues related to the pharmacology of pediatric cancer patients.”
Using the support provided by the CPRIT grant, the West Texas Pharmacology Core is focused on two primary areas of support: drug development and pediatric cancer. Kang says this core will address two major obstacles in drug development: small biotech companies and academic researchers with excellent drug candidates but a lack of pharmacology expertise; and the low profitability that generally results from developing pediatric cancer drugs. Because of this, Kang says, pharmaceutical companies tend to focus more of their drug development efforts on adult cancers.
Kang says establishing the West Texas Pharmacology Core allows TTUHSC to enhance the support it provides to some Texas academic investigators, small biotech companies and other academic institutions across Texas, especially in the area of pediatric cancers.