Prof Stan Kaye

Professor Stan Kaye

Section of Medicine
The Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden Hospital
Sutton

Developing new cancer treatments

Professor Stan Kaye is Chairman of the Section of Medicine at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR). He also leads the Drug Development Unit at the Royal Marsden Hospital. These two roles allow Professor Kaye to take new drugs discovered in the lab and test them in clinical trials in patients. In particular, his research focuses on ovarian cancer.

Ovarian cancer

Professor Kaye is investigating the faulty genes and proteins that cause ovarian cancer cells to grow as well as those that can cause resistance to chemotherapy. He is particularly interested in how certain genes are switched off in ovarian cancers and how drugs might be used to switch these genes back on.

Scientists at the ICR are carrying out lab studies to test drugs that target these specific faults. They are also looking at whether these drugs might work together with existing chemotherapy to make more effective treatments.

Professor Kaye's team is also developing a new drug called a 'TS inhibitor' that kills cancer cells by blocking the production of DNA. This drug has been designed to selectively enter tumour cells through binding to a receptor that is present on ovarian cancer cells but not on normal cells.

Many of the new drugs developed at the ICR are passed on to doctors and scientists at the Royal Marsden Hospital for preliminary testing in cancer patients.

Drug Development Unit

Professor Kaye leads the Drug Development Unit, which opened in February 2005 and is now one of the largest early-phase clinical trials units in the world. More than 200 patients are enrolled in trials each year and around 30 studies are currently underway.

Several of the new drugs tested have shown promising results including those that block the action of key proteins within cancer cells such as HSP90 and PI3-kinase. Another very promising drug, called a PARP inhibitor, is giving encouraging results in patients with an inherited form of ovarian cancer caused by a faulty BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene.

Professor Kaye is also leading several large multi-centre clinical trials across the UK to test new combinations of chemotherapy drugs in the treatment of ovarian cancer. This work will hopefully lead to several new treatment options for women diagnosed with this disease.

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