The university that gave the world cisplatin, one of the most widely used cancer chemotherapy drugs ever developed, is now working to defeat the resistance that drug eventually met.
In 1965, Michigan State University biophysicist Barnett Rosenberg and his team discovered that platinum compounds stop cells from dividing. That finding led to cisplatin, now a standard treatment for ovarian, bladder, lung, stomach, cervical and testicular cancers. Since 1975, the U.S. death rate from testicular cancer has fallen by roughly two-thirds, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Six decades later, the work is not finished. Up to 80% of ovarian cancer patients respond to chemotherapy at first, only to relapse when their tumors stop responding to the drug. Why that happens has been one of oncology’s most stubborn questions.
An MSU team led by Sachi Horibata, an assistant professor in the university’s Precision Health Program and Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, has found part of the answer. A protein called TPPP3 acts like armor inside cancer cells, stabilizing their internal scaffolding so the drug can no longer break them down. In the lab, removing TPPP3 made resistant cells vulnerable to cisplatin again. Patients whose tumors carry less of the protein already live longer and respond better to treatment.
The team, whose findings were published in the journal Cell Reports, is now pursuing two goals at once: a drug that targets TPPP3 directly, and a test that would flag patients at risk of resistance before it takes hold. Both are years from reaching clinical trials.
That distance is exactly why sustained funding matters. About 21,010 women in the United States will receive a new ovarian cancer diagnosis this year, according to the American Cancer Society. Most will respond to chemotherapy, and many of those will relapse. Every year this research is delayed is a year those patients do not have.
MSU solved this problem once already. It took years for a laboratory observation in East Lansing to become a drug on a hospital shelf, and that drug has been saving lives ever since. The next one is right where the first one started.
Michigan’s research universities are also an economic engine, generating $51.4 billion in annual economic activity, 7.1% of the state’s GDP. A call for cuts to university research is a call to cut the lifesaving discoveries and the economic benefits Michigan residents have relied on for generations.
Discover how Michigan’s research universities are solving real problems across the state:
Michigan State University: https://msu.edu/researchforyou
Michigan Technological University: https://www.mtu.edu/research/
University of Michigan: https://looktomichigan.umich.edu/
Wayne State University: https://wayne.edu/research-impact