Cancer Breakthrough – Scientists Developed New Drug That Kill Mother Cancer Cells
Scientists have developed a drug for the cancer disease which destroys the lethal cells that give birth to the cancer tumors. It has already been successful in dealing with breast cancer and it has offered a hope to people who are suffering from cancer in their bowel, skin or prostate.
The drug works by killing the cancer stem cells that help cancer tumors to grow and spread the disease to entire body of the patient. Unlike all other cancer cells, the ‘mother’ stem cells are not effectively abolished by chemotherapy and radiotherapy, as a result of which the cancer may returns after the treatment.
In the laboratory tests, Salinomycin, a new drug, was hundred times more efficient in destroying the stem cells as compared to powerful Taxol, the chemo treatment. When the drug injections were given to mice suffering from breast cancer, it also resulted in slowing down of the tumor growth. According to a journal Cell report, stem cells that were treated with Salinomycin were less capable of starting tumor in animals than the cells which were treated with Taxol.
The researchers from the US believe that a good number of drugs with similar capabilities can be developed in the period of next few years and that the treatment for cancer is only about 10 years away from reaching the market.
The new drug can be combined with the standard therapies so that the cancer stem cells that are left behind after the traditional methods of treatment can be mopped away from the body. Thus the chances of the return of cancer will be abolished.
It can also stop the cancer cells to get spread in other parts of the body. This condition is a very common cause of deaths of 155,000 patients suffering from cancer every year.
Piyush Gupta, from the Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, commented that until now, it was not clear whether it is possible to find the compounds that can selectively kill the cancer stem cells. But with this research, this thought has come true. Their work has revealed how targeting the cancer stem cells are affected biologically. Apart from that, it also suggests an approach to find novel therapies to treat cancer which are applicable to any solid tumors maintained by the cancer stem cells.
In the beginning, the researchers found a way to create cancer stem cells in the laboratory in large numbers. Then 16,000 chemicals were tested on the cells to check whether or not any of them and which of them proved to be toxic.
The antibiotic, Salinomycin, was given to the farm animals which came out to be the winner in the tests. It was also successful in zapping breast cancers in mice. A lot of work is needed for identifying how it works and for establishing whether it can be effective for human tumors. If it is found to be safe to be used, several years of rigorous testing on a large scale will be required before the drug can be sent to the market. Even after this, there is no way to confirm whether it will work on all the tumors. However, a lot of excitement has taken place among the experts.
John Stingl from the Cancer Research UK’s Cambridge Institute, compared the death of the cancer stem cells with gardening. He said that treating cancer is like mowing your garden. Every time you cut out the dandelions, every time they come back. The main thing is the roots which are the stem cells in case of cancer tumors. If there are different treatments that work on different parts, they can be combined together to bring a bigger effect.
Professor Colin Goding, an expert of stem cells at the Oxford University, warned that there can be dangers that the drug may kill wrong type of cells also inside the body.