Park Hee-sung, a professor at Catholic University of Daegu. [Provided by Catholic University of Daegu]
Park Hee-sung, a professor at Catholic University of Daegu. [Provided by Catholic University of Daegu]

A research team at Catholic University of Daegu has developed a treatment candidate that suppresses blood cancer cell growth and enhances the effectiveness of existing anticancer drugs by exploiting the principle of competition between cancer cells, the university announced Tuesday.

The findings were published June 16 in the international journal Oncology Research.

The research team focused on a protein called GPI (glucose phosphate isomerase), which is involved in energy production in the human body.

When this protein is secreted outside a cell, it acts as a signaling molecule known as AMF (autocrine motility factor) — promoting growth in some cancer cells while sending inhibitory signals to competing cancer cells.

Leveraging this principle, the team engineered short peptides composed of just 14 amino acids, each derived from the core region of AMF.

Among these, the AAP peptide — derived from AMF in lung cancer cells — selectively suppressed blood cancer cell growth and helped existing anticancer drugs work more effectively.

When the AAP peptide enters a cancer cell, it raises reactive oxygen species inside the cell and weakens its energy-generating function.

At the same time, it reduces the expression of ABC transporter (ATP-binding cassette transporter) proteins, which play the most critical role in anticancer drug resistance by actively pumping drugs out of the cell. This allows anticancer drugs to remain inside the cell longer.

In practice, when doxorubicin — an existing blood cancer treatment — was administered together with AAP, the concentration of doxorubicin needed to suppress cancer cell growth by half fell by 28 to 53 percent depending on the type of blood cancer cell. The results suggest that a smaller dose of an anticancer drug could achieve a greater effect.

"Unlike conventional approaches that search for new anticancer substances from external sources, this research is significant in that it uses the cell competition principle already present in the human body as a therapeutic strategy," said Park Hee-sung, the lead researcher. "It could serve as a new strategy to overcome multidrug resistance by directly weakening cancer cells while also enhancing the efficacy of existing anticancer drugs."

The study remains at the cell experiment stage using cancer cell lines, and further validation of efficacy and safety using normal hematopoietic cells and animal models will be required before an actual treatment can be developed. The research was conducted with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea, funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT.


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