SACRAMENTO, Calif. - May 24, 2024 - PRLog -- The ROS1ders announced the recipient of the 2024 Eunice and Milton Ring Grant for ROS1 Cancer Research. Funding for this grant is provided by Eunice and Milton Ring, whose daughter Karen Ring Weiss is a member of the ROS1+ cancer community.
The 2024 award was granted to Anthony Iafrate, MD, Ph.D, Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School and Vice Chair of Academic Affairs at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Iafrate's team is seeking new approaches to targeting ROS1+ fusion cancers that can overcome acquired resistance to current targeted therapies. They aim to identify regions of ROS1 fusion proteins that can be attacked with covalent inhibitors, which may lead to new treatments.
"Patient advocacy calls attention to the need for research about specific cancer biomarkers," says Eunice Ring. "Because ROS1+ cancer is rare, patients and their families must provide leadership in research focused on their cancer. We are very pleased to support Dr. Iafrate's team."
This grant is the third in a series of seed grants focused on ROS1+ cancers. Janet Freeman-Daily, co-founder and president of the ROS1ders, says "Our ROS1+ cancer community is grateful that biomarker testing and targeted therapy have added years to so many lives. However, the currently approved drugs don't work well for everyone. We hope our seed grants will generate findings that lead to larger research efforts and better outcomes."
You must be talking about the cascade because unless we don't need ROS1 at all, covalent binders sound extremely toxic. Maybe you meant allosteric inhibitors; that's a good idea, less steric hindrance for the pocket.
Maybe an accumulation in doublet or triplet of allosteric ligands with ros1 could trigger its own covalent attachment at the allosteric ligands' own allosteric site (Surrounding cell death turns ros1-fusion to "ligands").