Grant: Operating Grant

I will study a molecule that is a potential new treatment for colon cancer. Colon cancer is the 3rd leading cause of cancer death in Canada, with 24 patients dying of colorectal cancer in Canada each day. Current strategies to treat advanced colorectal cancer include chemotherapies, but many of the molecules used have severe side-effects for patients and are expensive to the Canadian health care system. The molecule we propose to study (cladoniamide) has been shown to kill colon cancer cells in the laboratory, and this molecule may be a good drug to treat advanced colon cancer patients. The drug may also be useful against other types of cancers. The molecule is isolated from a bacterial species that lives in the wild. We propose a program to make this bacterially-derived molecule in the laboratory. High-level production of the molecule in the laboratory will help lower the cost of the molecule. Further, we will use advanced techniques to make related molecules with small modifications that may have improved properties, i.e. better drugs. Finally, we will study the mechanisms that the bacteria uses to make this molecule. Proteins called enzymes are likely to be involved in making this drug. We want to understand how these enzymes work and use this information to make additional anti-cancer molecules for testing.