New anti-cancer drug works in unexpected ways

Cervical cancer, which is caused by HPV — a common sexually transmitted infection — is preventable with reliable and safe vaccines – Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File JOE RAEDLE

A small research team challenged the conventional “wisdom” surrounding a promising new anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory drug called Elenagen.

Every cell in our bodies expresses a protein called p62, which has been extensively studied for its role in autophagy, inflammation, and other processes. Adapter protein p62 (also referred as sequestosome 1/SQSTM1) is a type of multifunctional hub involved in autophagy, cell death, inflammation, immunomodulation, oxidative stress response and aging process.

When Dr. Alex Shneider, the founder of CureLab Oncology, developed Elenagen —a plasmid DNA therapy that delivers the p62 gene— the scientific community assumed it worked by simply increasing p62 levels in the cells up-taking the product.

Shneider was not convinced by this majority consensus. He partnered with the University of Camerino, a small Italian university known for its rigorous research, to investigate further. Their recent findings have turned the prevailing theory on its head.

Shneider  found that Elenagen does not work directly through expressing p62 in the cells that absorb the plasmid as previously thought. Instead, it acts indirectly by reprogramming “old” pro-inflammatory stem cells to behave like “young” anti-inflammatory ones.

By “young” and “old,” Shneider means that in a young organism, a stem cell differentiates into a bone cell, for example. While in an older one, it might generate a fat cell instead. Shneider and his co-authors published that “old” stem cells receiving Elenagen both become anti-inflammatory and secrete long-living, far-traveling signals capable of acting similarly to Elenagen.

This significance of the discovery opens up exciting new possibilities for treating a wide range of diseases beyond cancer, including osteoporosis, metabolic disorders, and even aging.

Furthermore, the research raises fundamental questions about the nature of the Elenagen-induced signal and its underlying mechanisms.

In related research, Shneider reports that CureLab Oncology has announced the filing of a worldwide patent application for a groundbreaking wound-healing therapy based on Elenagen.

This new application underscores the vast potential of CureLab’s p62-based technology to address multiple unmet medical needs.

The findings have been published in the Journal of Cellular Physiology, titled “p62/SQSTM1 indirectly mediates remote multipotent mesenchymal cells and rescues bone loss and bone marrow integrity in ovariectomized rats.”