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An intermittent approach for cancer chemoprevention

Nature Reviews Cancer volume 11, pages 879–885 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

Cancer chemoprevention approaches generally use long-term, continuous treatment, which can produce major preventive effects but which can also have unexpected serious adverse events. This raises the question of whether intermittent dosing schedules might reduce toxicity while retaining benefit, a concept that we call short-term intermittent therapy to eliminate premalignancy (SITEP). Recent preclinical studies support a novel SITEP approach whereby short-term, intermittent therapy eliminates premalignant cells via apoptosis that is induced by synthetic lethal interactions. Synthetic lethality allows personalized, selective elimination of premalignant clones without harming normal cells. This Opinion article provides a detailed discussion of the principle, method and future development of the SITEP approach.

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Figure 1: Principle of SITEP.
Figure 2: Cancer selectivity of TRAIL.
Figure 3: Synthetic lethal interactions suitable for SITEP.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported in part by a CPRIT grant RP110107 to X.W. and the institutional core/CCSG grant 5P30 CA-16672-36 from US NIH/NCI.

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  1. Xiangwei Wu is at the Departments of Clinical Cancer Prevention, and Molecular and Cellular Oncology, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas 77030, USA.,

    Xiangwei Wu

  2. Scott M. Lippman is at the Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas 77030, USA.,

    Scott M. Lippman

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Correspondence to Xiangwei Wu.

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Wu, X., Lippman, S. An intermittent approach for cancer chemoprevention. Nat Rev Cancer 11, 879–885 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc3167

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