Researchers describe chemical screen for small molecules that overcome stroma-induced drug resistance in multiple myeloma cells

Overcoming mechanisms of drug resistance is an ongoing obstacle in developing successful cancer therapeutics. In Cell Reports, researchers from the Broad's Center for the Development of Therapeutics and colleagues describe using multiple myeloma-stroma cell co-cultures to screen for small molecules that overcome stroma-induced drug resistance; notably, they identified a compound that uniquely interacts with a microtubule-bound mitotic protein highly expressed in multiple myeloma cells compared with normal blood cells. These finding illustrate how chemical biology can complement genetics to advance therapeutics discovery.