How could an innovative class of drugs tackle an incurable cancer?

What is the science behind this project?

The team are investigating a mechanism known as the Hippo pathway. For our bodies to function properly, our organs need to be the right size – before we are even born, this complex mechanism acts like Goldilocks, ensuring that all the vital machinery in our body (like our hearts, lungs and liver) are not too big, not too small, but just right. If this important pathway goes wrong, it can lead to parts of our body rapidly growing too many cells. This uncontrolled overgrowth becomes cancer. The Hippo pathway is mutated in more than half of mesotheliomas.

For 20 years, researchers have been fascinated by the Hippo pathway and how mutations to it can cause cancer, but it is only recently that the first Hippo-targeting drugs have been developed. This incredible advance is now in clinical trials, and is showing that it can stop tumours from growing. For cancers caused by problems in the Hippo pathway this is amazing news: there could be a brand new class of drugs that can stop cancer in its tracks. But in order for them to be useful, we need to understand exactly how they work – and how cancer, with its incredible ability to adapt and mutate, could learn to resist these drugs.