The death of her mother from ovarian cancer when Sui Huang, MD, PhD, was only 12 led to her lifelong scientific pursuit and a new discovery that Huang, an associate professor of cell and molecular biology, hopes may eventually prevent other children from suffering such a painful loss.

In a study published in Science Translational Medicine, Huang and colleagues have used a new approach and discovered a new compound that halts the spread of cancer cells, which is what makes the disease so lethal.

Scientists from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the University of Kansas, the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCAT) and Chen Wang, a research associate in Huang’s lab, worked closely as a team to make this discovery possible.

Huang had already discovered the complex marker that indicates cancer cells’ ability to transform into metastasizing “multiple-headed monsters,” as she describes them.

In the new study, co-corresponding author Huang and colleagues found a compound that blows up the monster and significantly reduced metastasis by human prostate, pancreatic, and breast cancer transplanted into mice.

Mice treated with the compound, named metarrestin, had fewer metastatic tumors in the lung and liver, and lived longer than mice that did not receive treatment.

Metarrestin will be submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for approval as an investigational drug in the near future, with the goal of launching a clinical trial.

There currently is not a drug aimed at selectively preventing cancer metastasis.

“It’s like a dirty bomb against cancer,” said Huang, also a member of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, describing metarrestin’s potency against metastasizing cells. “It could potentially result in a better outcome for patients with solid tumor cancers with high potential to spread to other organs. It’s promising.”

Why is it important to develop a drug that doesn’t just target one gene but multiple factors?

“The metastatic cancer cell is a beast that is nearly entirely different from a normal cell,” said Huang, who has been working on this research for 25 years. “Targeting one thing is not sufficient to stop metastatic cancer.”

Most of the time the primary cancer tumor—which can be dealt with by surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy—doesn’t cause death.

“What kills people is when cancer spreads to other organs, such as when breast cancer spreads to the brain, liver, lungs, or bones,” Huang said.

The cancer patient survival rate has significantly improved in the last 20 years due to earlier diagnosis and combination treatments. But the survival of people with metastatic cancer has not changed much.

Metarrestin potentially could be effective as part of combination therapy after cancer surgery.

“This represents a new strategy for developing anticancer drugs,” Huang said. “It’s seeking one compound that can potentially affect multiple relevant targets that are promoting metastasis.”