Professor Michael Shipman

Department of Chemistry
University of Warwick
Coventry

New drugs to treat pancreatic cancer

Professor Michael Shipman is developing a new type of drug to treat pancreatic cancer. He is Professor of Synthetic Chemistry at the University of Warwick.

Professor Shipman is investigating an enzyme called Akt, which is often overactive in pancreatic cancer cells. This helps the cells to cope with low nutrient levels inside a tumour, allowing the cancer to keep on growing.

By developing a drug that will block the action of Akt, Professor Shipman hopes to remove the cancer cells’ ability to survive inside the tumour. This should stop the tumour from growing by ‘starving’ the cancer cells.

Drug ideas from bacteria

Professor Shipman is focusing on substances called kigamicins that are produced by bacteria found in the soil. Kigamicins block the action of Akt, and importantly they are toxic to cancer cells but much less harmful to healthy cells. However, natural kigamicins can’t be used as drugs because the molecules are too big, and they’re difficult to produce in large amounts.

Professor Shipman and his team are making a new kind of drug that has the same anti-cancer properties as a kigamicin but in a smaller molecule. They are designing and creating different molecules, and testing them on pancreatic cancer cells in the lab to find out which is most effective.

Pancreatic cancer is often very hard to treat, but in the future new drugs like this could improve the outcome for people with the disease.