BBB seminar: Per Øyvind Enger

Per Øyvind Enger
Department of Biomedicine, University of Bergen

The global burden of cancer will increase in the coming years and represents a major cause of human suffering and a huge burden on health economies worldwide. Radiotherapy is cost-efficient, commonly available and a mainstay treatment. Many tumour types however, exhibit varying degrees of radio-resistance once they have metastasised. Thus, malignancies in the advanced stage are usually lethal cancers. This proposal is rooted in previous studies on sulfasalazine (SAS) that inhibits synthesis of glutathione, an anti-oxidant that protects against reactive oxygen species induced by radiotherapy. However, SAS is largely degraded in the intestine, limiting its bioavailability, and exhibits toxicity in pre-treated cancer patients. Thus, our research activities focus on structure-optimisation of synthetic SAS-analogues suitable for clinical use as radiosensitiseres. Data from our work will be presented.

Chairperson: Jaakko Saraste, Department of Biomedicine