Tropes

futurity_medicine 00116.txt

#Stop cancer from spreading without chemo Stanford university rightoriginal Studyposted by Tom Abate-Stanford on October 6 2014 Researchers are testing a protein therapy that stops breast and ovarian cancer from metastasizing in mice. The majority of patients who succumb to cancer fall prey to metastatic forms of the disease says Jennifer Cochran an associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford university. Today doctors try to use chemotherapy to slow or stop cancer from spreading from the original tumor site to other parts of the body but these treatments are unfortunately not very effective and have severe side effects. The new therapy doesn't have side effects. It works by preventing two proteins Axl and Gas6 rom interacting to initiate the spread of cancer. Axl proteins stand like bristles on the surface of cancer cells poised to receive biochemical signals from Gas6 proteins. When two Gas6 proteins link with two Axls the signals that are generated enable cancer cells to leave the original tumor site migrate to other parts of the body and form new cancer nodules. To stop this process Cochran used protein engineering to create a harmless version of Axl that acts like a decoy. This decoy Axl latches on to Gas6 proteins in the bloodstream and prevents them from linking with and activating the Axls present on cancer cells. In collaboration with Amato Giaccia professor of radiation oncology the researchers gave intravenous treatments of this bioengineered decoy protein to mice with aggressive breast and ovarian cancers. Mice in the breast cancer treatment group had 78 percent fewer metastatic nodules than untreated mice. Mice with ovarian cancer had a 90 percent reduction in metastatic nodules when treated with the engineered decoy protein. A paper published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology details the results. This is a very promising therapy that appears to be effective and nontoxic in preclinical experiments Giaccia says. It could open up a new approach to cancer treatment. Giaccia and Cochran are scientific advisors to Ruga Corp. a biotech startup in Palo alto that has licensed this technology from Stanford. Further preclinical and animal tests must be done before determining whether this therapy is safe and effective in humans. Source: Stanford Universityyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license e

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