Poster Presentation 25th Lorne Cancer Conference 2013

Evaluation of the efficacy of bromodomain inhibitors for the treatment of colorectal cancer (#380)

Lars Tögel 1 , Rui Wu 1 , John M Mariadason 1
  1. Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Heidelberg, VIC, Australia

Every week, 70 Australians die of colorectal cancer. This is mainly due to the lack of treatment options for patients presenting with late stage disease. Our laboratory investigates novel and innovative therapies for the treatment of colorectal cancer and has extensive pre-clinical and translational experience working with targeted therapeutics. Bromodomain inhibitors are a class of novel molecular compounds that have recently demonstrated strong anti-tumour efficacy in pre-clinical models of haematological cancers. These compounds inhibit a subset of chromatin-binding proteins which contain a bromodomain. The bromodomain and extra-terminal (BET) family member BRD4 regulates the transcription of growth-promoting genes, including c-myc, and blocking of BRD4 protein activity has been shown to inhibit tumour cell growth and to induce tumour cell differentiation. Here, we test the efficacy of the highly specific bromodomain inhibitor JQ1 in a panel of colorectal cancer cell lines to evaluate potential therapeutic benefits of JQ1 in the treatment of patients presenting with late stage, metastatic colorectal cancer.