{"id":218589,"date":"2025-07-24T00:07:41","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T05:07:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/targeting-the-undruggable-new-molecular-degraders-offer-hope-for-aggressive-breast-cancer"},"modified":"2025-07-24T00:07:41","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T05:07:41","slug":"targeting-the-undruggable-new-molecular-degraders-offer-hope-for-aggressive-breast-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/targeting-the-undruggable-new-molecular-degraders-offer-hope-for-aggressive-breast-cancer","title":{"rendered":"Targeting the \u2018undruggable\u2019: New molecular degraders offer hope for aggressive breast cancer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/targeting-the-undruggable-new-molecular-degraders-offer-hope-for-aggressive-breast-cancer.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In the battle against aggressive breast cancer, a once-elusive target is now within reach\u2014thanks to a breakthrough from a team from the Faculty of Medicine at Hebrew University. Dr. Raphael Benhamou and M.Sc. student Liann Kassabri have developed innovative druglike molecules capable of degrading HuR, a key RNA-binding protein that stabilizes oncogenes and fuels cancer progression.<\/p>\n<p>HuR (also known as ELAVL1) has long been labeled \u201cundruggable\u201d due to its structural flexibility and lack of a conventional active site. Overexpressed in many cancer types\u2014particularly breast cancer\u2014HuR fortifies <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/malignant+cells\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">malignant cells<\/a> by protecting mRNAs that drive <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/cell+growth\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">cell growth<\/a> and survival.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe knew that simply blocking HuR wasn\u2019t enough,\u201d says Dr. Benhamou. \u201cWe needed to eliminate it altogether.\u201d Strikingly, this elimination led to a three to four orders of magnitude improvement in anticancer properties compared to traditional HuR-binding molecules that do not induce degradation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the battle against aggressive breast cancer, a once-elusive target is now within reach\u2014thanks to a breakthrough from a team from the Faculty of Medicine at Hebrew University. Dr. Raphael Benhamou and M.Sc. student Liann Kassabri have developed innovative druglike molecules capable of degrading HuR, a key RNA-binding protein that stabilizes oncogenes and fuels cancer [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1522],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-innovation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}