Cancer News and Discussions

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https://phys.org/news/2024-03-nasa-tout ... ancer.html

NASA touts space research in anti-cancer fight

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Combining epigenetic cancer medications may have benefit for colorectal cancers and other tumor types
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-03- ... nefit.html
by Van Andel Research Institute

A pair of medications that make malignant cells act as if they have a virus could hold new promise for treating colorectal cancers and other solid tumors, reports a study published in Science Advances.

The preclinical research, led by Van Andel Institute scientists, determined how low doses of a DNMT inhibitor sensitize cancer cells to an EZH2 inhibitor, resulting in a one-two punch that combats cancer cells better than either drug alone.

The findings are the foundation for an upcoming Phase I clinical trial to evaluate this combination in people with colorectal cancer or other solid tumors.

"DNMT inhibitors are approved to treat blood cancer while EZH2 inhibitors are approved to treat blood cancer and a rare type of sarcoma. To date, they've had limited individual success in solid tumors like colorectal cancer," said Van Andel Institute Professor Scott Rothbart, Ph.D., the study's corresponding author.

"Our findings highlight the promise of combination cancer therapies by revealing how these two medications interact, with the DNMT inhibitor priming cancer cells in a way that makes the EZH2 inhibitor more effective."

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Study successfully mimics complex neuroblastoma vasculature on a chip to explore treatments
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-03- ... ature.html
by Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia

Neuroblastoma, one of the most common childhood cancers, is classified as a developmental cancer because it arises prenatally during the formation of organs and tissues. It originates from cancer cells that develop in neuroblasts, a type of immature nerve tissue, and primarily affects the adrenal glands.

One of the research focal points of Dr. Josep Samitier's group (Nanobioengineering Group of IBEC), led by Dr. Aránzazu Villasante, is the creation of in vitro neuroblastoma models that replicate its characteristic vasculature in order to search for new biomarkers and develop effective therapies against this type of cancer.

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Enhanced melanoma vaccine offers improved survival for men
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-03- ... l-men.html
by University of Virginia

A second-generation melanoma vaccine being developed at UVA Cancer Center improves long-term survival for melanoma patients compared with the first-generation vaccine, new research shows. Interestingly, the benefit of the second-generation vaccine was greater for male patients than for female patients. That finding could have important implications for other cancer vaccines, the researchers say.

The vaccine developers, led by Craig L. Slingluff Jr., MD, found that they could enhance the effectiveness of their melanoma vaccine by simultaneously stimulating important immune cells known as "helper T cells" to recognize melanoma proteins, in addition to stimulating killer T cells against melanoma. This boosted patient survival and helped prevent reoccurrences of the cancer.

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Researchers Turn Back the Clock on Cancer Cells to Offer New Treatment Paradigm
March 27, 2024

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists reversed an aggressive cancer, reverting malignant cells towards a more normal state. Rhabdoid tumors are an aggressive cancer which is missing a key tumor suppressor protein. Findings showed that with the missing tumor suppressor, deleting or degrading the quality control protein DCAF5 reversed the cancer cell state. These results suggest a new approach to curing cancer — returning cancerous cells to an earlier, more normal state rather than killing cancer cells with toxic therapies — may be possible. The results were published today in Nature.

“Rather than making a toxic event that kills rhabdoid cancer, we were able to reverse the cancer state by returning the cells toward normal,” said senior author Charles W.M. Roberts, MD, PhD, Executive Vice President and St. Jude Comprehensive Cancer Center director. “This approach would be ideal, especially if this paradigm could also be applied to other cancers.”

“We found a dependency which actually reverses the cancer state,” said first author Sandi Radko-Juettner, PhD, a former St. Jude Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences student, now a Research Program Manager for the Hematological Malignancies Program at St. Jude. “Standard cancer therapies work by causing toxicities that also damage healthy cells in the body. Here, it appears that we’re instead fixing the problem caused by the loss of a tumor suppressor in this rhabdoid cancer.”

Drugging the un-targetable

In many cancers, there is no easily druggable target. Often, these cancers are caused by a missing tumor suppressor protein, so there is nothing to target directly as the protein is missing. Loss of tumor suppressors is much more common than a protein gaining the ability to drive cancer. Consequently, finding a way to intervene therapeutically in these tumors is a high priority. The researchers were looking for a way to treat an aggressive set of cancers caused by the loss of the tumor suppressor protein SMARCB1 when they found a new approach to treatment.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1039340

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Purdue Researchers Create Biocompatible Nanoparticles to Enhance Systemic Delivery of Cancer Immunotherapy
March 27, 2024

Introduction:

(Eurkelert) WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University researchers are developing and validating patent-pending poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid), or PLGA, nanoparticles modified with adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, to enhance immunotherapy effects against malignant tumors.

The nanoparticles slowly release drugs that induce immunogenic cell death, or ICD, in tumors. ICD generates tumor antigens and other molecules to bring immune cells to a tumor’s microenvironment. The researchers have attached ATP to the nanoparticles, which also recruits immune cells to the tumor to initiate anti-tumor immune responses.

Yoon Yeo leads a team of researchers from the College of Pharmacy, the Metabolite Profiling Facility in the Bindley Bioscience Center, and the Purdue Institute for Cancer Research to develop the nanoparticles. Yeo is the associate department head and Lillian Barboul Thomas Professor of Industrial and Molecular Pharmaceutics and Biomedical Engineering; she is also a member of the Purdue Institute for Drug Discovery and the Purdue Institute for Cancer Research.

The researchers validated their work using paclitaxel, a chemotherapy drug used to treat several types of cancers. They found that tumors grew slower in mice treated with paclitaxel enclosed within ATP-modified nanoparticles than in mice treated with paclitaxel in non-modified nanoparticles.

“When combined with an existing immunotherapy drug, the ATP-modified, paclitaxel-loaded nanoparticles eliminated tumors in mice and protected them from rechallenge with tumor cells,” Yeo said.

Read more of the Eurekalert article here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1039278

For a technical presentation of the study as published in ACS Publications: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.3c11445

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Beating by Overheating: New Strategy to Combat Cancer
March 27, 2024

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) Many new drugs inhibit the processes that cancer cells need to divide rapidly. So as to inhibit the cancer as a whole. But cancer cells have all sorts of workarounds to get around that effect. As a result, the tumor becomes unresponsive to treatment.

That's why researcher Matheus dos Santos Dias is taking a completely different approach. He had to convince some colleagues before he could start working on this quite surprising idea. After all, you're not going to give cancer cells a boost, are you? "We're going against the prevailing view that you can only fight cancer cells by inhibiting them," he knows. "But we had strong evidence that it also works if you overstimulate and exhaust them."

Everyone makes inhibitors

And so he set out to find a drug that stimulates cancer cells, as well as a perfectly suited partner drug that can then finish the job. By doing so, he wants to upset the balance in cancer cells to the point where they can no longer save themselves. "Compare it to the engine of a racing car: if you crank up the RPM and then turn off the cooling, it's bound to crash. This is exactly what we are trying to do with the drugs."

Tricky though: "Activating drugs are not that common, almost everyone makes inhibitors. But we did find one we could work with," he says. That drug acts on the protein PP2A. In a large-scale experiment with all kinds of drug combinations, he and his colleagues then found a WEE1 inhibitor to be the best partner in crime. That inhibitor targets overactive, stressed cells and keeps them from functioning properly.
Higher gear

Cancer cells and mice with patient tumors respond well to the drug combo. And, not insignificantly, the side effects seem manageable. Dos Santos Dias: "This obviously does not mean it will not have side effects in humans. But we suspect that normal cells can defend themselves against this activation much better than cancer cells, which of themselves are already in a higher gear."

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1039146

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New synthesis platform allows for rapid cancer drug synthesis and testing
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-synthesis ... -drug.html
by Alex Epshtein, Imperial College London

Imperial College London researchers have developed a new platform for the synthesis, analysis and testing of new compounds which may one day treat cancer. The findings are published in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

The discovery of new compounds with pharmacological properties can be expensive and time-consuming. Therefore, there is an increasing interest in developing workflows that allow for the rapid synthesis and testing of multiple compounds in parallel.

Imperial scientists, Professor Ramon Vilar and Dr. Tim Kench from the Department of Chemistry, have developed a workflow that focuses on metal-based compounds that become highly toxic to cancer cells upon exposure to light.

Using this light-activated toxicity to kill cancerous cells is known as photodynamic therapy (PDT).

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Using cryo-shocked tumor cells to fight lung cancer
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-04- ... ancer.html
by Bob Yirka , Medical Xpress

A team of medical researchers at Zhejiang University, in China, has developed a way to use cryo-shocked tumor cells to fight lung cancer. In their study, published in the journal Science Advances, the group used fast liquid nitrogen treatment to modify tumor cells to carry gene-editing tools to fight tumors in mouse models.

As noted by the researchers, CRISPR-mediated genome editing tools and techniques hold great promise for treating cancer. However, problems with tumor targeting and off-target side effects hamper their effectiveness. For this new research, the team found a way to improve targeting by converting tumor cells into carriers for the gene editing tools.

The work involved cryo-shocking tumor cells extracted from a patient, which involved rapid freezing using liquid nitrogen. Such freezing removed their pathogenicity while preserving their structure, and more importantly, their surface receptor functions. After freezing, the CRISPR-Cas9 system was loaded into the cryo-shocked tumor cell, which made its way to the tumor, where it was ablated.