Tag: cancer

Fooling Cancer Cells into Taking in Anti-cancer Drugs

Stress Fibres and Microtubules in Human Breast Cancer Cells. Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Attaching anti-cancer drugs to a common protein and making a ‘poison pill’ that cancer cells take in could increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy, according to researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

In order to kill cancer cells effectively, enough anticancer drugs need to be delivered into a tumour as possible, which is often difficult. A new approach involves binding the drugs to albumin, the most abundant protein in blood. Tumours have a strong appetite for protein nutrients to fuel malignant growth. When they consume albumin, the tumour will also take in the drugs bound to this protein.

One commonly used albumin-bound drug is nanoparticle albumin-bound paclitaxel (nab-PTX), which has been successfully used in the treatment of advanced lung and pancreatic cancers. “Not all patients respond to nab-PTX, though, and the effectiveness of its delivery to tumours has been mixed, owing to an incomplete understanding of how albumin impacts drug delivery and actions,” said senior author Miles Miller, PhD, a principal investigator in the MGH Center for Systems Biology and assistant professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School.

To improve their understanding, Prof Miller and colleagues examined the delivery of nab-PTX to tumours at a single-cell resolution in mouse models of cancer. Using 3D microscopy and tissue clearing technology, the team found that cancer cells can take up a significant amount of nab-PTX. They also found that the consumption of these drugs is controlled by signaling pathways involved in the cells’ uptake of nutrients such as albumin.

“This discovery suggested that if we could manipulate these pathways, we might be able to trick cancer cells into a nutrient-starved state, thereby enhancing their consumption of nab-PTX,” explained Ran Li, PhD, first author on the study and an instructor in the MGH Department of Radiology and the Center for Systems Biology. Indeed, treating tumours with an inhibitor of insulin-like growth factor 1 receptor, an important component of one of the signaling pathways, improved the accumulation of nab-PTX in tumours and boosted its effectiveness.

“These results offer new possibilities to improve delivery of albumin-bound drugs in patients with diverse types of cancer,” said Prof Miller.

Source: Phys.Org

Journal information: Ran Li et al, Therapeutically reprogrammed nutrient signalling enhances nanoparticulate albumin bound drug uptake and efficacy in KRAS-mutant cancer, Nature Nanotechnology (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41565-021-00897-1

Young Cancer Researchers Strive On Despite Pandemic

DNA Fragmentation. A dye marker on agarose gel used to separate DNA by a female scientist. The smaller fragments move faster, the larger ones move slower. This separation process is used to analyse the size of DNA fragments, to map DNA, to separate fragments of DNA to create clones. Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Although long hours in the lab are standard, some young cancer researchers have told BBC’s Radio 1 Newsbeat that, in order to continue their work, the pandemic is forcing them to work longer, harder days with no pay.

Many relished the easing of COVID rules in the UK at the beginning of the summer months. However Dr Alba Rodriguez-Meira, 28, said that those sunny weeks were like an “extended lockdown”.

At the time, labs had been shut for nearly four months and Dr Rodriguez-Meira worked more than 90 hours a week – equivalent to 13 hours a day, 7 days a week – to catch up her leukaemia research at the University of Oxford.

“That was fine during the first month but it becomes a bit disruptive in terms of life quality if you try to do it for much longer,” Dr Rodriguez-Meira said.

Her weekly hours are slowly returning to her usual 60 a week – but she’s still feeling the pressure.

“I’ve lost a lot of productivity – sometimes I think I’ve not been as happy or as passionate as I used to be.

“Working under these circumstances has made me lose a bit of that. And I am sometimes so, so, absolutely tired.”

Social distancing rules mean that even though labs have reopened, not everyone can be there at the same time.

This is affecting the work of PhD student Laurien van de Weijer, 24, who is studying meningioma, a kind of tumour which makes up over a third of primary central nervous system tumours.

An important experiment she was running at her lab at the University of Plymouth over Easter weekend in April failed because she could not get in to provide nutrients to the tumour cells, which subsequently died. She is apprehensive about the 18 months she has left to finish her doctorate.

“I’ll be so overloaded… because I lost lots of time in the early stage, I really have to catch up, so I probably will do crazy hours.

“I really don’t look forward to being in the lab in the middle of the night.”

Laurien is also concerned that the longer she takes to get her research done, “the longer there won’t be any good drugs” for people with meningiomas.

The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) says the COVID pandemic will add on an extra two years to the lag time between new treatments being discovered and cancer patients being able to use them.

“We don’t have the luxury of time – that’s the truth – to wait for two extra years,” says Amani Liaquat, 23, who has an aggressive cancerous brain tumour known as a glioblastoma multiforme, and according to doctors has between 12 and 18 months to live.

Amani is now trying a new drug called ONC201 which is still in trials, after chemotherapy and radiotherapy have both failed to shrink the tumour

Amani says she “can’t really put into words” how grateful she is to researchers going into labs during the pandemic, “risking their own health to try and help others”.

“The fact that people are still out there, trying their best in such difficult circumstances is really important,” she says.

Spurred on by stories like Amani’s, some groups of so-called “wet lab” researchers, whose work is experiment-heavy, have come up with shifts that allow them in to labs while observing social distancing.

It’s often after midnight when Beshara Sheehan begins her cycle home from the ICR lab in Sutton, south London.

Beshara Sheehan, 28, whose research is on improving prostate cancer therapy, works a lot of late shifts, often cycling home at midnight. She finds it “difficult to switch off” from work, having to still communicate with on-shift colleagues..

Fiona Want, 25, works at the same site as Beshara, albeit in a different research team, but prefers early morning shifts over late ones.

“It took a bit of getting used to having that real jumble of routine,” said Fiona, who has walked half her day at the lab and half at home.

Her research is on bladder cancer, and works up to 55 hours a week, 10 hours more than pre-COVID. She is driven on by the death of her fiance’s dad from cancer at the end of last year.

“That’s been a real source of motivation for me to keep working hard and a reminder that everyone’s life is, in some way, impacted by cancer,” she said.

“It is so important that we don’t let research slow down and keep pushing forward with discoveries that ultimately save lives.”

Source: BBC News

‘Chemical Nose’ Sniffs Out Cancer-causing DNA Folds

Artistic depiction of DNA double helix. Image by lisichik from Pixabay

Small folds in DNA structure have been implicated in breast cancer and other diseases have been elusive until a team of researchers developed a “chemical nose” to seek them out.

In the journal Nature Chemistry, chemists at  UC Riverside describe the development and testing of a “chemical nose” enabling them to “smell” unusual folds in DNA.

“If a DNA sequence is folded, it could prevent the transcription of a gene linked to that particular piece of DNA,” explained study author and UCR chemistry professor Wenwan Zhong. “In other words, this could have a positive effect by silencing a gene with the potential to cause cancer or promote tumors.”

DNA folding could also have a negative effect, however.

“DNA folds could potentially keep viral proteins from being produced to minimize immune response,” Prof Zhong said.

DNA folds have also been examined as potential targets for chemotherapy.   

To date, scientists have been unable to easily determine the effects of DNA folding on living organisms, as they lacked the proper tools to study them. In order to create one that can study the tiny structures, TUCR organic chemistry professor Richard Hooley and colleagues modified an existing concept that has previously been used to detect other things, such as chemical components in different vintages of wine.

The chemical system could be configured to seek out any kind of molecule, but it could not detect DNA in the way it was currently used. The addition of nonstandard components Prof Hooley’s group enabled the nose to sniff out its DNA target.

“Humans detect smells by inhaling air containing odor molecules that bind to multiple receptors inside the nose,” explained Prof Hooley. “Our system is comparable because we have multiple receptors able to interact with the DNA folds we’re looking for.”

The chemical nose consists of three parts: host molecules, fluorescent guest molecules, and DNA, which is the target. The guest molecules glow when the sought-after folds are present in a sample.

DNA is made of four nucleic acids: guanine, adenine, cytosine and thymine which are combined into the familiar double helix of DMA. Sections that are rich in guanine sometimes fold differently and create what’s called a G-quadruplex.

The parts of the genome that make these quadruplex structures are extremely complex, though the researchers have found that their folds are known to regulate gene expression, and aid in maintaining cell health.

The researchers sought to demonstrate that they could detect a single type of quadruplex composed of four guanines. Prof Zhong said that having accomplished this, the research team will try to build on their success.

“Now we think we can do more,” she said. “There are other three-dimensional structures in DNA, and we want to understand those as well.”

For their next step, the researchers will examine how effects that damage DNA influence the ways they fold. In addition, they also plan to study RNA folding since RNA is also important for cellular functioning.

“RNA has even more complex structures than DNA, and is more difficult to analyze, but understanding its structure has great potential for disease research,” Prof Zhong said. 

Source: UC Riverside News

New Radiotherapy Treatment for Metastatic Cancers is Safe

MRI machine. Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay

A phase I trial showed that stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) proved safe for treating cancer patients with multiple metastases. However, some late adverse effects underscored the need for long-term follow-up.

SBRT is a new radiotherapy treatment method that delivers high doses of ionising radiation to tumours with great precision, minimising damage to other parts of the body while killing tumour cells.

Increasingly used by clinicians, SBRT can improve survival in cancer patients with multiple metastases, explained first author Steve Chmura, MD, PhD, of University of Chicago Medicine, and colleagues, but there is little evidence as to its safety in this application.

“Existing data include mostly treatment of 1 or 2 metastases separated widely from each other and use of differing radiation doses, toxicity reporting, image guidance, and normal tissue constraints,” they wrote. “Given the critical need, NRG Oncology NRG-BR001 trial sought to determine the safety of delivering curative-intent SBRT to patients with 3 to 4 metastases or 2 metastases within close proximity to each other.”

Patients in the study had metastatic breast, prostate, or non-small-cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). Each metastasis was assigned to a metastatic location based on the potential for toxicity.

Dose-limiting toxicity (DLT; side effects severe enough to discontinue treatment) was the primary study outcome, defined as specific AEs of grades 3 to 5 related to SBRT within 180 days of treatment. Dose levels were considered to be safe if DLTs were seen in no more than one of six patients per location with metastases.

Of the evaluable 35 patients, 12 (34.3%) had breast cancer, 10 NSCLC (28.6%), and 13 (37.1%) prostate cancer, with a median of three metastases per patient.

DLT analysis WAS based on six evaluable patients in all of the metastatic locations save the liver (five evaluable patients). The authors reported there were no protocol-specified DLTs in any of the seven metastatic locations within 180 days of the initiation of treatment.

There were 50 grade 3 or 4 AEs reported in 18 patients, and eight were deemed to be linked to the treatment. Of those eight, six (including bone pain, pulmonary fibrosis, bronchial fistula, bronchial stenosis, spinal fracture, and humeral fracture) were reported in six patients over 180 days from the start of the treatment. No treatment-related deaths occurred, according to the authors.

The authors suggested that, with the number of late AEs reported in this trial, patients should be monitored closely for late toxic effects.

“Given the potential for ablative radiotherapy to improve outcomes of patients with oligometastatic cancer, the finding that SBRT is safe when delivered to 3 to 4 metastases or 2 metastases in close proximity to one another is important, and serves as the foundation for ongoing randomized trials,” wrote the authors. They noted that these include studies such as the phase II/III NCI-sponsored NRG-BR002 trial.

Source: MedPage Today

Journal information: Chmura S, et al “Evaluation of safety of stereotactic body radiotherapy for the treatment of patients with multiple metastases” JAMA Oncol 2021; DOI: 10.1001/jamaoncol.2021.0687.

Loneliness in Middle-aged Men Tied to Cancer Risk

Older man sitting alone on beach. Photo by Engin Akyurt from Pexels

A recent study by the University of Eastern Finland shows that loneliness among middle-aged men is associated with an increased risk of cancer.

Cancer is the second leading cause of death around the world, and in high-income countries it has become the main cause. Recent scientific evidence demonstrates that stress plays a positive role in cancer initiation, progression and cancer metastasis, as well as a negative role for anti-tumor immune function and therapy response.

“It has been estimated, on the basis of studies carried out in recent years, that loneliness could be as significant a health risk as smoking or overweight. Our findings support the idea that attention should be paid to this issue,” said project researcher Siiri-Liisi Kraav from the University of Eastern Finland.

The study was launched in the 1980s with middle-aged men from eastern Finland participating. To avoid reverse causality, individuals who already had a cancer diagnosis or received a cancer diagnosis within two years after the baseline data collection were excluded from the analysis. The  2570 eligible participants had their health and mortality monitored on the basis of register data through to the present. Follow-up lasted an average of 20.44 years, and the average age of cancer diagnosis was 69.96 years.
Factors accounted for included age, socio-economic status, lifestyle, sleep quality, depression symptoms, body mass index, heart disease and other risk factors.

During the follow-up, 649 men (25% of participants) developed cancer, and 283 men (11%) died of cancer. Loneliness was associated with a roughlt 10% increased cancer risk. In addition, cancer mortality was higher in cancer patients who were unmarried, widowed or divorced at baseline.
Based on these results, the researchers recommended that consideration of loneliness and social relationships should be an important part of comprehensive health care and disease prevention. The findings were published in Psychiatry Research.

“Awareness of the health effects of loneliness is constantly increasing. Therefore, it is important to examine, in more detail, the mechanisms by which loneliness causes adverse health effects. This information would enable us to better alleviate loneliness and the harm caused by it, as well as to find optimal ways to target preventive measures,” concluded Kraav.

Source: University of Eastern Finland

Journal information: Kraav, S., Lehto, S.M., Kauhanen, J., Hantunen, S., Tolmunen, T., 2021. Loneliness and social isolation increase cancer incidence in a cohort of Finnish middle-aged men. A longitudinal study. Psychiatry Research: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2021.113868

Avocado Compound May Be Useful in Leukaemia Therapy

Avocados may be good for more than just an expensive toast topping. According to a new study from the University of Guelph a compound in avocados offers a potential route to improved leukaemia therapy.

The compound in questions targets an enzyme that scientists have identified for the first time as being critical to cancer cell growth, explained Dr Paul Spagnuolo, at the Department of Food Science.

The study focus was on acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), which is the most severe form of leukaemia. Most cases occur in people over age 65, with fewer than 10% of patients surviving five years after diagnosis.

Leukaemia cells have elevated levels of an enzyme called VLCAD involved in their metabolism, said Dr Spagnuolo.

“The cell relies on that pathway to survive,” he said, explaining that the compound is a likely candidate for drug therapy. “This is the first time VLCAD has been identified as a target in any cancer.”

Dr Spagnuolo’s team screened nutraceutical compounds among a variety of compounds, searching for any substance that could inhibit the enzyme. “Lo and behold, the best one was derived from avocado,” said Dr Spagnuolo.

Avocados have already been shown to improve lipid profiles, as well as helping to control weight, likely through increased satiation. His lab previously examined avocatin B, a fat molecule found only in avocados, for potential application in diabetes prevention and obesity management. He’s now keen to see it put to use in leukaemia patients.

“VLCAD can be a good marker to identify patients suitable for this type of therapy. It can also be a marker to measure the activity of the drug,” said Dr Spagnuolo. “That sets the stage for eventual use of this molecule in human clinical trials.”

Around half of patients over 65 diagnosed with AML currently enter palliative care. Some may undergo chemotherapy, but these treatments are often toxic and result in patients dying.

“There’s been a drive to find less toxic drugs that can be used,” he noted.

Referring to earlier work using avocatin B for diabetes, Spagnuolo said, “We completed a human study with this as an oral supplement and have been able to show that appreciable amounts are fairly well tolerated.”
The results of the study were published in the journal Blood.    

Source: Medical Xpress

Journal information: Matthew Tcheng et al, Very long chain fatty acid metabolism is required in acute myeloid leukemia, Blood (2021). DOI: 10.1182/blood.2020008551

A Golden Opportunity for Metformin as a Cancer Drug

In a new study from the National University of Singapore, a new approach to target highly resistant triple-negative breast cancers (TNBCs) has been developed using a gold-metformin prodrug.

Metformin, first approved by the FDA in 1994, is a widely prescribed “over-the-counter” medication for Type 2 diabetes. Some evidence shows that people taking metformin for an extended period have a significantly reduced cancer risk. In spite of evidence of its effects and its low cost, use of metformin as an anticancer agent has serious drawbacks, with poor uptake by cells necessitating repeated high doses to have a therapeutic effect.
A team of researchers led by Prof Ang Wee Han from the Department of Chemistry, National University of Singapore and Prof Maria Babak from City University of Hong Kong came up with a way of chemically conjugating metformin, as well as its analog phenformin. They accomplish this by using a gold-based active molecular fragment to increase bioavailability and achieve synergistic action of the two key components (metformin and gold molecules). 

The electrochemical activity of the gold-based molecule,enabled the team to successfully deliver metformin into cancer cells with high selectivity. The lead drug candidate, 3met, was found to have an anti-cancer activity over 6000 times higher than regular metformin.

Prof Ang said, “TNBCs represent an especially dangerous subset of breast cancers with the poorest prognosis and limited treatment options. However, this particular aggressiveness of TNBC cells is related to their increased dependence on glucose and lipids, which provide additional energy to sustain rapid cancer growth. Since our drug candidates interfered with energy production in the cancer cells, we hypothesized that TNBCs might be particularly responsive to such treatment.”

In tests with mice, the research team injected the drug candidate into breast tumours at their nipple region and monitored the growth of the tumours. They found that in a drug-treated group, tumour growth completely halted after three weeks, indicating the unique anticancer potential of the drug candidate. 

With an patent application filed for, the research team is actively working on the development of other efficient drugs for the treatment of chemo-resistant cancers.

Source: Medical Xpress

Journal information: Maria V. Babak et al. Interfering with Metabolic Profile of Triple‐Negative Breast Cancer using Rationally‐Designed Metformin Prodrugs, Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2021). DOI: 10.1002/anie.202102266

Lipid-wrapped Peptide Sends Chemo Drugs Deep into Tumours

A study has shown that a peptide wrapped in a fatty liposome capsule can deliver chemotherapy drugs deep into tumour sites.

University of Minnesota researcher Hongbo Pang led a cross-institutional study on improving the efficacy of nucleotide-based drugs against prostate cancer and bone metastasis.  

The researchers looked at whether liposomes (enclosures of fatty molecules), when integrated with the iRGD peptide (which binds strongly to tumour blood vessels), will help concentrate antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs, a type of nucleolytic drug) into primary prostate tumours and its bone metastases.

More importantly, they investigated whether this system helps more drugs across the vessel wall and deeply into the tumor tissue. This is critical because, although nucleotide drugs have unique advantages in treating tumours and other diseases, they often struggle to cross the blood vessels and penetrate the tumour tissue, where their targets reside. Their clinical applicability and efficacy is hampered as a result. Even typical chemotherapeutic agents only penetrate 3-5 cancer cell diameters deep.

“Our system demonstrates a good ability to deliver more ASOs into both primary tumor tissue and bone metastases — which is the primary site for prostate cancer metastasis. This further translates into a significant improvement of ASO efficacy to inhibit the growth of primary tumor and bone metastases,” said study leader Hongbo Pang, assistant professor at the College of Pharmacy, and member of the Masonic Cancer Center. “We expect this system to become a universal carrier system, to improve the clinical efficacy of ASOs and other nucleotide drugs.”

The study found that iRGD-liposomes can increase the tumor accumulation and vascular/tissue penetration of ASOs against the disease-driving gene of prostate cancer. It also found that the ability of ASOs to inhibit primary tumours and bone metastases growth was significantly improved with iRGD-liposomes. A long-term tumour inhibition study was also performed, which showed that iRGD-liposomes significantly extends the AR-ASO suppression of primary tumor growth.

Pang and his team concluded that iRGD-liposomes are proven as a desirable delivery system for ASOs, and could enhance the clinical efficacy of nucleotide drugs in cancer therapies.

Source: News-Medical.Net

Journal information: Guan, J., et al. (2021) iRGD‐Liposomes Enhance Tumor Delivery and Therapeutic Efficacy of Antisense Oligonucleotide Drugs against Primary Prostate Cancer and Bone Metastasis. Advanced Functional Materials. doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202100478.

Wrapping up Tumours With Micromesh Nets

An innovative new nanomedicine has been developed that wraps up tumours in a micromesh net, conforming to the surface of tumor masses and efficiently delivering drugs.

The scientists at the IIT (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology) who developed the mesh described it in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Brain tumors are rare but they are some of the most aggressive and difficult to treat. In particular, glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), which is a grade 4 glioblastoma has the most severe prognosis: the average survival is just over 12 months and only 5% of the patients survive beyond 5 years.

GBM typically affects men and women between 45 and 75 years of age. Furthermore, unlike other malignancies, there has been no significant diagnostic and therapeutic improvements for this malignancy over the past 30 years. In fact, both the incidence of new cases and the number of deaths has remained practically unchanged. The only therapeutic strategy currently used is based on surgery, which consists of removing a part of the tumor mass and reducing intracranial pressure, followed by radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy.

The biomedical system developed by IIT and its collaborators can play a very important role in the fight against the disease, representing a possible effective alternative to the few pharmacological treatments used to date.

The microMESH is a micrometric-scale polymeric net, made from biodegradable materials and wraps around the tumour mass, enclosing it. In fact, the micrometric thick polymeric fibers are very flexible and are arranged to form regular openings, which are also on the same scale as cancer cells. This unique feature allows the microMESH to achieve a closer interaction with the tumor mass, increasing the therapeutic efficacy.

Its structure consists of two separate compartments in which different drugs can be loaded which are released towards the tumor mass in an independent, precise, and prolonged fashion. Combining different therapies: chemotherapy, nanomedicine, and immunotherapy enables the microMESH to ‘attack’ glioblastoma.

This work has been carried out by a team led by Prof Paolo Decuzzi, head of the IIT Laboratory of Nanotechnology for Precision Medicine, in collaboration with the Neural Stem Cell Biology Laboratory of Dr Rossella Galli at the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan and a team led by Prof Gerald Grant at the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital of Stanford University.

The group will continue to develop the microMESH by integrating different types of drugs and therapies to tackle other types of tumors. In the short term, their major objective will be to validate the technology on glioblastoma patients.

Source: News-Medical.Net

Journal information: Mascolo, D. D., et al. (2021) Conformable hierarchically engineered polymeric micromeshes enabling combinatorial therapies in brain tumours. Nature Nanotechnology. doi.org/10.1038/s41565-021-00879-3.

Donated Afro Hair Wigs Now Possible Thanks to UK Girl

A silhouetted woman with afro hair reading a book by a window. Photo by Thought Catalog from Pexels

A British girl who was told her afro hair was too delicate to donate for wig-making prompted a new wig-making approach to use it, BBC News reports.

When eleven year old Carly Gorton wanted to donate her afro hair to the Little Princess Trust charity, which makes natural hair wigs for children who have lost theirs from cancer treatment and other causes, she was initially frustrated as the charity said the hair was too delicate. Undeterred, Carly had urged the charity to rethink, which it did.

Following research and a trial to make them possible, the charity described the new wigs as a “historic breakthrough”.

“It’s really beautiful,” said Carly, of one of the new wigs.

A BMJ study showed that wigs positively impact psychological wellbeing for people with alopecia, attributed to increasing their confidence of going out in public and the perception of fewer comments about hair loss.

At a special school assembly, Carly’s mother Anna Mudeka then cut her daughter’s hair and it was donated for use in the first new wigs to be worn by other children.

Phil Brace, The Little Princess Trust’s chief executive, said Carly’s “determination” to donate her hair had pushed them to find a solution.

The charity worked with the 120-year-old London company Raoul to develop a wefting method to weave and tie the donated locks.

Carly’s mother, Anna Mudeka, said: “History has been made and we are so proud of Carly.

“Through her sheer determination and everyone pulling together to hear her voice, children of black and mixed heritage can now donate their hair to the Little Princess Trust.”

Ms Mudeka, of Southburgh, added that children needing wigs through illness could now receive a wig “true to their heritage”.

Carly and her mother’s campaign had created a “fundamental change in wig manufacturing”, said Mr Brace. “The commitment and work that has gone on has shown just what is possible when groups of people get together and bring different skills to find a solution.”

Source: BBC News