For decades, cancer drug developers have focused on inhibition. Now, a GV-backed startup is eyeing activation

One of the back­bones of can­cer med­i­cine is shut­ting down key can­cer-dri­ving path­ways to kill tu­mor cells. But for years, re­searchers have no­ticed hy­per­ac­ti­va­tion of cer­tain sig­nals in these path­ways can lead to the same re­sult.

Re­searchers from Bill Sell­ers’ lab at the Broad In­sti­tute want­ed to fig­ure out how wide­ly hy­per­ac­ti­va­tion could be ap­plied to kill tu­mor cells. They ex­plored over-ac­ti­vat­ing three ma­jor can­cer-dri­ving path­ways across near­ly 500 cell lines, and they found that over-ac­ti­vat­ing cer­tain sig­nals in all three path­ways could keep tu­mor cells at bay, ac­cord­ing to a new study in Na­ture Ge­net­ics pub­lished Mon­day.

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