Research Projects

Breast cancer treatment faces challenges due to tumor recurrence and chemo-resistant properties of breast tumors. Current drugs are toxic, expensive, and have adverse side effects. Few chemotherapeutic drugs have been found to promote tumor proliferation and division. The average number of FDA-approved drugs has decreased since the 1990s, and clinical trials take 10-15 years. This has led to a growing interest in repurposing drugs for breast cancer. This involves using in silico or computational methodologies to find new applications for medicinal molecules targeting tumor signaling. The project aims to repurpose market-available PDE inhibitors, particularly PDE4 inhibitors like rolipram and roflumilast, for breast cancer treatment. The study aims to investigate whether these inhibitors modulate pathways or molecules associated with tumorigenesis and metastasis, such as matrix metalloproteases and E-cadherin. The significance of this study lies in studying market-approved PDE inhibitors for cancer, where they are associated with their target PDE and proteins associated with metastasis, making them efficient anti-targets with multiple roles causing tumor regression. The repurposed drugs can be taken to clinical trials if they have effective anti-cancer activities and can be used as potent anti-cancer targets alongside current therapeutic interventions.