The Efflux Resistance Breaker (ERB), a proprietary technology developed at King’s, was successfully applied to the structure of a commonly used chemotherapy drug. The study, published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, found that this technology was able to limit the effectiveness of pumps inside cancer cells that push out the drug while avoiding issues related to toxicity that have plagued previous approaches.

This demonstrates how ERB-driven design could overcome chemoresistance, one of the most persistent challenges in cancer therapy.

“Drug resistance remains one of the greatest barriers to long-term cancer control. This study shows that by building efflux resistance directly into the drug structure, we can overcome transporter-mediated resistance without the toxicity issues that have limited previous approaches. It offers a powerful framework to redesign existing cancer drugs and make them effective again.” says Professor Miraz Rahman.