Stanford researchers find molecule that kills kidney ca...(TF-62247 is toxic to kidney cancer it is...),Health

As an added benefit, Giaccia said, patients treated with STF-62247 should not suffer some of chemotherapy's infamous side effects, like nausea and hair loss, because STF-62247 is not toxic to the entire body.

Clinical trials could begin "in the next couple years," Giaccia said.

Stanford co-author and postdoctoral fellow Denise A. Chan, PhD, said she believed the new findings could affect how all types of cancer are treated in the future.

This study is one of the first to identify a trait unique to a certain form of cancer - in this case, kidney cancer's deficient VHL gene - and exploit it to defeat the disease, Chan said. She predicted other scientists soon would follow suit, looking for characteristics in other cancers that also could be manipulated.

Researchers' motivation could be twofold, the study's authors said: to find cures for deadly cancers, and to rein in the debilitating side effects caused by many current cancer treatments.

"These results can be extended far beyond kidney cancer," Chan said.

The findings also speak well for Stanford's High-Throughput BioScience Center, which opened in 2004. The results of this study are some of the first using the center's equipment.

The high-throughput equipment at Stanford can analyze thousands of molecules for their cytotoxicity at the same time, allowing researchers like those in Giaccia's lab to search for hidden genes and molecules that previously would have been quite laborious to find.

Without the center, "This work would not have been possible," said Stanford co-author Patrick Sutphin, MD. The findings have special significance for Sutphin, who worked with the Stanford team before moving on to his internship in medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. In 1995, when
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