Overcoming the Undruggable Nature of the Most Common Human Oncogene K-Ras

Air date: Wednesday, March 8, 2023, 2PM Description: NIH Director's WALS Lecture [WALS] Kevan Shokat is a chemist who discovers drugs against some of the most common drivers of human cancers. He is best known for targeting a mutation that drives more than 1 in 10 lung cancers, opening up a new arena of cancer treatment discovery. The target, K-Ras, is the most common driver of cancer, and was considered “undruggable” by most cancer researchers after 40 years of failed attempts to block its function. Dr. Shokat’s discovery of a K-Ras blocker broke through this decades-old barrier and threw open the doors to a new class of cancer treatments. Lecture summary: 1. To understand the chemical, biochemical and cellular challenges to identifying a drug to target K-Ras mutant tumors 2. To learn how to discover drugs which only target oncogenes in cancer cells while sparing signaling in the rest of the body using covalent chemistry. 3. To learn about new approaches for combination therapy in cancer including re-activation of the tumor suppressor p53 and engaging the immune cells to overcome resistance to targeted therapies. https://cancer.ucsf.edu/people/shokat... For more information go to https://oir.nih.gov/wals Author: Kevan Shokat, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley Permanent link: https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=46070