A young IECB scientist awarded by the French Association for Cancer Research (ARC)

In October 2011, Neil Owens, 31, was awarded the Helen Starck prize by the French Association for Cancer Research (ARC). Since 2010, the chemist from Canada has been working in the team of Gilles Guichard on molecules capable of causing the death of cancer cells.

"I believe it is the applied nature of our project which appealed to the ARC”

Currently, the vast majority of chemotherapy treatments affect both healthy and cancer cells indiscriminately. They can cause numerous adverse side effects, such as mucositis, hair loss, digestive disorders, cardiac, neurological and hematologic toxicity, etc.
Since 2010, with the support of ARC, Neil Owens has been exploring an alternative way to treat cancer at the IECB within the team of Dr. Gilles Guichard (CMBN, UMR 5248 - CNRS/UB1). He explains: "In the 90’s, American researchers discovered a protein that specifically targets tumor cells and which triggers apoptosis, that is to say cell death. Our goal is to create a mimic of this human protein with artificial chemical compounds.” The use of synthetic mimes to develop new drugs has several advantages. On the one hand, artificial molecules are more effective because their degradation in the body is relatively slow. On the other hand, the production costs of these chemicals are well below those of their natural counterparts. According to Neil Owens, "I believe it is the applied nature of our project that appealed to the ARC."

200 000 compounds screened in a week

In October 2011, Neil Owens presented promising initial results to the jury of the Helen Starck prize of ARC. His approach is simple and effective. It consists in creating thousands of different potential mimics and then selecting those that interact with the receptor that triggers apoptosis in tumor cells. In June 2011, in the context of a collaboration supported by Interbio, the biocluster of south-west Europe, Neil Owens went to Barcelona to screen a library composed of over 200,000 compounds. In the end, within only seven days, he managed to identify one hundred candidates. "Now we can start more detailed experiments. We must determine the molecular sequences of the candidates, re-synthesize them, and validate their ability to kill tumor cells in vitro. If things go well, I hope we will begin tests in in vivo models by 2013", concludes the researcher.