The ability to make, test, and map the atomic structure of new anti-cancer agents has enabled a team of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists to discover a compound capable of halting a common type of drug-resistant lung cancer.

In a study to be published in the December 24/31 issue of the journal Nature, the researchers report that non-small cell lung cancers that had become invulnerable to the drugs Iressa(R) and Tarceva(R) were stymied by a compound designed and formulated in a Dana-Farber lab.  The compound, whose basic chemical framework is different from that of other cancer drugs, acts against a protein – known as an epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) kinase – that carries a specific structural defect.