AstraZeneca’s ‘radiosensitizer’ may enhance efficacy of radiation for deadly brain cancer

Re­searchers are test­ing an ex­per­i­men­tal drug de­vel­oped by As­traZeneca with ra­di­a­tion to see if pair­ing the treat­ments will boost ra­di­a­tion’s ef­fi­ca­cy in glioblas­toma, a no­to­ri­ous­ly dif­fi­cult can­cer to treat.

The As­traZeneca treat­ment, dubbed AZD1390, in­hibits a DNA re­pair en­zyme called ATM. AZD1390 is meant to act as a “ra­diosen­si­tiz­er”; it aims to pre­vent DNA from re­pair­ing af­ter ra­di­a­tion dam­ages the DNA in can­cer cells. And pre­clin­i­cal da­ta have sug­gest­ed that tu­mor tis­sue ap­pears es­pe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to AZD1390’s re­pair in­hi­bi­tion, ra­di­a­tion on­col­o­gist Jonathan Yang told End­points News.

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