A team of researchers from an interdisciplinary branch of medicine at the University of Texas has identified small molecules that represent novel anti-cancer drugs that can target lung cancer, recent research has found. A related article was published in Nature Communications. The PCT patent (WO 2013028543 A1) is on record with the relevant agencies. To a large extent, surviving lung cancer patients are in very poor health because they are resistant to conventional lung cancer treatments. Programmed cell death, or apoptosis, is a natural process within cells, and scientists are learning how to successfully use this process to treat cancer. Bax molecules are needed for the important stages of programmed cell death. The study has previously identified the serine 184 site of the Bax molecule as a key functional switch that controls cell death activity. Therefore, researchers worked to master how to manipulate the Bax molecule serine 184 site to design a new strategy to treat cancer. In the current study, the researchers used a structural groove at the serine 184 site as a mooring site to screen approximately 300,000 small drug-like compounds for small molecules that are used to activate the Bax molecule and initiate apoptosis in lung cancer cells. They identified three Bax small molecule catalysts targeting the serine 184 site, which activates Bax molecule cell death and potently inhibits lung cancer tumor growth. The researchers also found that these compounds that treated Bax-positive lung cancer tumors had no toxic effects on their nearby non-cancerous tissues. ”These compounds have great potential as a novel class of anticancer drugs for the targeted treatment of Bax-positive lung cancer.” Dr. Jia Zhou said, “They can induce high levels of apoptosis in lung cancer cells under conditions that do not trigger apoptosis in non-cancerous tissue cells.”