IIT BHU Researchers Identify a Compound That Kills Breast Cancer Cells Without Harming Healthy Ones

Chemotherapy has been the backbone of cancer treatment for decades, but it comes with a cost that patients know too well. Because most chemotherapy drugs cannot distinguish between cancerous and healthy cells, they damage both — causing hair loss, severe fatigue, nausea, weakened immunity, and a range of other side effects that can be as debilitating as the disease itself.

The search for a more precise alternative — one that zeroes in on cancer cells while sparing the rest — has driven cancer research for years.

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) in Varanasi have now published findings that bring that goal measurably closer.

A team led by Professor Vikas Kumar Dubey from the Department of Biochemical Engineering, along with scholars Shivkumar and Raj Bahadur Singh, has identified a chemical compound that selectively targets breast cancer cells, restricts their growth, and pushes them towards self-destruction without affecting healthy tissue in laboratory conditions.

Finding one molecule among millions

Dubey and his team spent nearly one and a half years developing a new anticancer drug candidate. During the study, they analysed millions of chemical compounds in the ZINC database and identified a promising molecule, ZINC-000002107582.

The ZINC database is a publicly available repository of commercially available compounds widely used in drug discovery research. Computational screening of its contents — using techniques that model how molecules interact with biological targets — is a recognised method for identifying leads that would otherwise take decades to find through traditional means.

Laboratory tests of the compound on breast cancer cells produced encouraging results. The significance of this is considerable.

Breast cancer cases in India increased steadily from 200,218 in 2019 to 221,579 in 2023, with deaths rising from 74,481 to 82,429 during the same period.

It is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among Indian women, and despite advances in treatment, late-stage detection remains a serious challenge.

How the compound works

The research team found that the compound interferes with two key proteins, UVRAG and BAX, which play crucial roles in cancer cell survival and proliferation.

These proteins help cancer cells remain alive and multiply rapidly by ensuring a continuous supply of nutrients. The newly identified compound disrupts the interaction between UVRAG and BAX by breaking their binding mechanism.

The consequence of that disruption is direct. Cancer cells are deprived of essential nutrients, causing their growth to stall before they gradually become inactive and die.

The compound also has a second line of action: it increases levels of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) within cancer cells, creating excessive cellular stress that triggers a self-destruction process, ultimately eliminating them.

In effect, the compound both starves the cancer cell and activates its self-destruct mechanism — two independent pathways working towards the same outcome.

What still lies ahead

The findings were published in the journal Biochemistry, a publication of the American Chemical Society, and the team has also filed a patent application for the compound.

Professor Dubey noted that, unlike conventional chemotherapy, the compound acts specifically on cancer-affected cells, which could make future treatments both more effective and significantly less distressing for patients.

That said, the compound has so far been tested only on breast cancer cells under laboratory conditions. Before it can be developed into a medicine for patients, it must undergo animal testing followed by human clinical trials.

The distance between a promising laboratory result and a viable drug is long, and the path through clinical trials is rigorous. But early-stage research of this kind — identifying a precise molecular target, demonstrating selective action in laboratory conditions, and publishing peer-reviewed findings — is exactly where that journey begins.

For a disease that claims tens of thousands of Indian lives every year, a compound that attacks cancer on its own terms, without collateral damage, is a development worth watching.

Sources:

‘New IIT BHU Study Finds Potential Alternative to Chemotherapy for Breast Cancer Treatment‘: by ETV Bharat English Team, Published on 4 June 2026

‘Professor Vikas Kumar Dubey — Faculty Profile, Department of Biochemical Engineering‘: by IIT BHU Varanasi, Published on iitbhu.ac.in

‘Rising breast cancer in India: Challenges and opportunities‘: by Observer Research Foundation, Published on 10 February 2025

‘Breast cancer survival in India across 11 geographic areas under the National Cancer Registry Programme‘: by Sathishkumar et al. for Cancer, Wiley Online Library, Published on 6 January 2024

‘Investigating the function of UVRAG protein in regulation of apoptosis and autophagy and its implications in cancer‘: by Shiv Kumar, Manash Sarma, Ehasanullah Khan and Vikash Kumar Dubey, Published in International Journal of Biological Macromolecules, Elsevier, 2025

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