Abhishek Chakraborty, PhD

New Gene Discovery Points to a Promising Kidney Cancer Treatment Target

Kidney cancer is becoming more common in the United States, with about 82,000 new cases and 14,500 deaths expected this year. Even with advances in treatment, it is still not curable once it spreads, so finding new therapies remains essential.

New genetic technologies now allow scientists to study many genes at the same time. One of these tools, called CRISPR, can “switch off” individual genes in cancer cells. By turning off genes in tandem, researchers can see which genes the cancer depends on to survive. This process works like a molecular sieve, helping identify the small number of genes that truly drive cancer growth.

Using this approach, Dr. Chakraborty and his team recently discovered that kidney cancer cells rely heavily on a protein called AHCYL1. When they turned off AHCYL1 in many different kidney cancer cell lines, the cancer cells struggled to survive. They also found that AHCYL1 has chemical features that make it a good candidate for drugs designed to block it.

Because AHCYL1 appears to play an important role in how cancer cells use nutrients, the team believes that shutting it off may starve kidney cancer cells and slow or stop their growth. This work is now helping guide efforts to better understand AHCYL1 and explore whether it could become a new target for kidney cancer treatment.