Venezuelan scientists develop a molecule that will allow chemo and radiotherapy treatments to be combined

Published at: 04/06/2025 09:14 AM

From the Organic Physicochemistry Laboratory of the “Dr. Gabriel Chuchani” Chemistry Center, of the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research (IVIC), they are promoting a very ambitious project in the field of health that would become a solution for the treatment of breast cancer.

The research team is led by Dr. Alvaro Álvarez, who is working on the design of a molecule that is an active ingredient where chemotherapy and radiation therapy can be combined at the same time.

“For this study, we have taken breast cancer as a pilot test and the idea is to find a way to combine chemo and radium in one molecule. This can be achieved by taking the medication most commonly used to treat breast cancer called Tamoxifen (it is an antiestrogen, that is, it blocks the action of estrogen in breast tissue). This can stop the growth of some breast tumors (which need estrogen to grow), so we studied their properties, which in some way inhibit breast cancer.”

He also said that for radiation therapy, they apply a therapy called neutron capture. Taking into account that when radiation therapy is applied, what is done is ionizing radiation to the malignant tissue where it seeks to break the DNA of the malignant cell to prevent its proliferation.

“The Tamoxifen that we have studied is rationally modified, leaving the part that acts on the estrogenic system unchanged and we modify the other sector where we place some type of molecule that is capable of capturing a gaudinium atom (transition metal that captures neutrons); if we manage to take the active ingredient leaving the active part of Tamoxifen intact and in the other part we place the gaudinium we could achieve a specific target and so much radiation would not be required in the person and thus avoid the unpleasant consequences of radiation such as stomach problems and skin burns,” Álvarez explained.

The expert points out that if this synergy is achieved, chemotherapy doses and radiation therapy can be reduced. “If we obtain good results with this hypothesis, we could move on to the treatment of other types of cancer that are much more aggressive and whose life expectancy is more restricted.”

Are there preliminary results with this study?

We have already developed two parts, the first called rational synthesis. In this phase we are rationing the compound and modifying it until we achieve what we want. The route synthesis is ready, but the work could not be completed due to the lack of instruments and equipment for characterization, we only have infrared, but we need nuclear magnetic resonance equipment, which does not exist in the country.

Also, we have worked on the theoretical part that is very useful in order to corroborate the experimental results. From a computational point of view, advances have been made in refining the compound we developed and we have optimized its structure. We are studying a technique that is widely used in the pharmaceutical area called molecular coupling.

Mazo News Team