ARTIK-52 induces replication-dependent DNA damage and p53 activation exclusively in cells of prostate and breast cancer origin

Using different approaches we detected that ARTIK-52 induces replication-dependent double strand DNA breaks exclusively in cancer cells of prostate and breast origin, while not causing DNA damage, or any toxicity, in normal cells, as well as in non-PC and non-BC tumor cells, independent of their proliferation status. This amazing specificity, combined with such a basic mechanism of toxicity, makes ARTIK-52 a potentially useful tool to discover novel attractive targets for the treatment of BC and PC.

Thus, phenotypic screening allowed us to identify a compound, whose properties cannot be predicted based on existing knowledge and moreover, uncover a barely known link between AR and DNA damage response in PC and BC epithelial cells.