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Cancer therapy

Time to hit pause on mitochondria-targeting cancer therapies

Nature Medicine volume 29, pages 29–30 (2023)Cite this article

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As another clinical trial of a mitochondria-targeting cancer therapy faces failure, it calls for a thorough re-evaluation of the strategy; the time has come to go from the bedside back to the bench.

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Fig. 1: Targeting metabolism for cancer therapy comes with a cost when the scale is tipped toward intolerable on-target, off-tumor side effects.

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Acknowledgements

C.V.D. is supported by the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and National Cancer Institute (NCI) grants R01CA252225, R01CA054197 and R01CA057341.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, New York, NY, USA

    Xue Zhang & Chi V. Dang

  2. Bloomberg-Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Xue Zhang & Chi V. Dang

  3. Department of Oncology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Xue Zhang & Chi V. Dang

  4. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Chi V. Dang

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  1. Xue Zhang
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  2. Chi V. Dang
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Correspondence to Chi V. Dang.

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Competing interests

C.V.D. is consultant for the Barer Institute, Rafael Holdings, Inc. X.Z. declares no competing interests.

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Zhang, X., Dang, C.V. Time to hit pause on mitochondria-targeting cancer therapies. Nat Med 29, 29–30 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-022-02129-y

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