How a Milk Exosomes Could Eliminate One of the Biggest Challenges in Treating Cancer and Other Disease
January 16, 2025
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) Lincoln, Nebraska, Jan. 16, 2025 — Two Nebraska researchers have launched a startup company aimed at bringing to market an innovative method for delivering therapeutics, gene editing tools, plasmids and more to targeted locations in the human body.
Minovacca, recently incorporated by Janos Zempleni and Jiantao Guo, will commercialize the use of universal milk exosomes — natural nanoparticles contained in milk — to transport cargo to human cells. Drawing on bioorthogonal chemistry techniques, the researchers achieve target-specific delivery by chemically and genetically engineering the exosomes. NUtech Ventures, the university’s nonprofit commercialization affiliate, has filed a patent for the technology.
The technology’s flexibility means it could be used to treat common and rare diseases alike — a potential boon to rare disease communities, which struggle to secure research funding because of the relatively small patient base.
“Because our technology is so versatile, we are not limited to one particular rare disease. We can actually use this same technology to tailor to a large number of rare diseases,” said Zempleni, Willa Cather Professor of nutrition and health sciences. “Rare disease groups are so thankful that there is maybe a light at the end of the tunnel.”
The company’s launch is the culmination of years of research at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, first proving the viability and safety of milk exosomes as a transport mechanism, then incorporating the genetic engineering and bioorthogonal chemistry techniques enabling targeted delivery. Zempleni credits funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (A1511 Nanotechnology for Agricultural and Food Systems program), the National Institutes of Health’s Targeted Genome Editor Delivery Challenge and the Syngap Research Fund for propelling the research to this point.
Cannabis has shown promising results in managing symptoms related to cancer, including alleviating pain, reducing chemotherapy-induced nausea, and easing anxiety associated with a cancer diagnosis. While it is not a cure for cancer, studies indicate that it can effectively address secondary symptoms when used alongside conventional treatments.
A close relative has been using this treatment for 5 weeks and has already experienced noticeable improvements. While not all symptoms have disappeared, she feels significantly better and more at ease. This progress gives hope that the treatment will continue to provide relief.
A phase 3 clinical trial has shown that adding a targeted immunotherapy drug to chemotherapy dramatically improved – almost doubled – the cure rate for patients with the most common kind of breast cancer. The findings suggest adopting a new treatment paradigm for the disease.
A couple of years ago, New Atlas covered how treating Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system, by combining an immunotherapy drug with chemotherapy led to greatly improved remission rates compared to those who received chemotherapy alone.
Now, the recently published results of an international phase 3 clinical trial led by Australia’s Peter MacCallum Cancer Center (Peter Mac) have shown that using the same kind of treatment combination is also effective against the most common kind of breast cancer.
A test for pee-based markers of prostate cancer has previously relied on an uncomfortable first step. A new study has revealed that the now-available test remains just as accurate without it, paving the way from an easy in-home testing option.
After lung cancer, the number-one cause of cancer death in American men is prostate cancer, with about one in 44 men succumbing to the disease. Globally, the disease is the number one cancer for men in 118 different countries. If caught early, prostate cancer can usually be managed quite well. In fact, Johns Hopkins Medicine reports that about 80 to 85% of all prostate cancers are detected in the beginning stages, leading to disease-free status after five years.
In April last year, researchers at the Rogel Cancer Center at University of Michigan (UM) Health announced that they had developed a new urine-based test that could help with early detection. Specifically, their test, known as MyProstateScore2.0 or MPS2, was able to distinguish between positive tests for a slow-growing form of prostate cancer that's unlikely to cause harm and the more aggressive form of the disease, requiring rapid medical treatment. It works by screening for 18 different genes associated with aggressive prostate cancer.
It's a little pill with big responsibilities. But despite its primary role to prevent pregnancy, the contraceptive pill (the Pill) could also help reduce the risk of ovarian cancer, according to research from the University of South Australia.
The work is published in the International Journal of Gynecologic Cancer.
Screening for risk factors of ovarian cancer using artificial intelligence, UniSA researchers found that the oral contraceptive pill reduced the risk of ovarian cancer by 26% among women who had ever used the Pill, and by 43% for women who had used the Pill after the age of 45.
The study also identified some biomarkers associated with ovarian cancer risk, including several characteristics of red blood cells and certain liver enzymes in the blood, with lower body weight and shorter stature associating with a lower risk of ovarian cancer.
Researchers also found that women who had given birth to two or more children had a 39% reduced risk of developing ovarian cancer compared to those who had not had children
Outside-in Signaling Shows a Route Into Cancer Cells February 4, 2025
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) A new study shows how an anticancer drug triggers an “outside in” signal that gets it sucked into a cancer cell. The work, published Jan. 29 in Nature Communications, reveals a new signaling mechanism that could be exploited for delivering other drugs.
Many malignant cancers overexpress a protein called P-cadherin, which is embedded in the cell membrane. Because cancer cells have a lot of P-cadherin sticking out of their surface, the protein has been targeted for drug development.
Monoclonal antibodies against P-cadherin can carry a drug payload to the cancer cells. It has not been clear, though, exactly how the antibodies attach to P-cadherin or how they get inside the cancer cell once attached.
Bin Xie and Shipeng Xu, graduate students in biophysics and biomedical engineering at the University of California, Davis, with Professor Sanjeevi Sivasankar, carried out a series of experiments to study binding of antibody CQY684 to P-cadherin in detail.
Additional extract:
“Our results establish an outside-in signaling mechanism that provides fundamental insights into how cells regulate adhesion,” the authors wrote. Understanding the binding targets for antibodies against cadherin could help design drugs that exploit this pathway to find and destroy cancer cells.
Scientists Want to Throw a Wrench in the Gears of Cancer’s Growth February 4, 2025
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) For decades, scientists have tried to stop cancer by disabling the mutated proteins that are found in tumors. But many cancers manage to overcome this and continue growing.
Now, UCSF scientists think they can throw a wrench into the fabrication of a key growth-related protein, MYC, that escalates wildly in 70% of all cancers. Unlike some other targets of cancer therapies, MYC can be dangerous simply due to its abundance.
In a paper that appears Feb. 4 in Nature Cell Biology, researchers at UC San Francisco describe how to curb MYC levels. They discovered that another protein, called RBM42, makes cells churn out MYC.
Disrupting RBM42 in pancreatic cancer cells, one of the deadliest cancers, stopped them from growing. The researchers now think drugs could be developed to do the same in a host of other fast-growing cancers that are driven by MYC. By blocking RBM42, such drugs would effectively block MYC.
“MYC is what we see when a cancer is resilient to anything we try to do to defeat them,” said Davide Ruggero, PhD, a professor of urology at UCSF and senior author of the paper. “Now that we can see the machinery that controls the amount of MYC, there may finally be a way to stop it.”
How Hungry Fat Cells Could Someday Starve Cancer to Death February 4, 2025
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) Liposuction and plastic surgery aren’t often mentioned in the same breath as cancer.
But they are the inspiration for a new approach to treating cancer that uses engineered fat cells to deprive tumors of nutrition.
Researchers at UC San Francisco used the gene editing technology CRISPR to turn ordinary white fat cells into “beige” fat cells, which voraciously consume calories to make heat.
Then, they implanted them near tumors the way plastic surgeons inject fat from one part of the body to plump up another. The fat cells scarfed up all the nutrients, starving most of the tumor cells to death. The approach even worked when the fat cells were implanted in mice far from the sites of their tumors.
Relying on common procedures could hasten the approach’s arrival as a new form of cellular therapy.
“We already routinely remove fat cells with liposuction and put them back via plastic surgery,” said Nadav Ahituv, PhD, director of the UCSF Institute for Human Genetics and professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences. He is the senior author of the paper, which appears Feb. 4 in Nature Biotechnology.
Existing cardiac drug helps keep cancer from spreading
By Michael Irving
February 09, 2025
https://newatlas.com/cancer/cardiac-dru ... cer-cells/
One of cancer’s deadliest tricks is its ability to spread to other organs. An existing cardiac drug has now been found to reduce the risk of metastasis by dissolving circulating clusters of breast cancer cells in patients.
Radiation and chemotherapy are effective at combatting cancer, but tumors can “leak” cells into the bloodstream, potentially seeding new tumors elsewhere in the body. This can lead to a kind of Whack-A-Mole game that drastically reduces the chance of a patient’s survival.
Finding ways to attack these circulating tumor cells (CTCs) could prevent new tumors from taking hold, and improve patient outcomes. In 2019, scientists at ETH Zurich tested more than 2,400 substances against CTCs in lab cultures. One of the most promising was a compound called digoxin, originally derived from foxglove.
Scientists have developed new light-sensitive chemicals that can radically improve the treatment of aggressive cancers with minimal side effects. In mouse tests, the new therapy completely eradicated metastatic breast cancer tumors.
The novel chemicals, called cyanine-carborane salts, and their role in the next-generation of cancer treatments, are described in a new study published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
Photodynamic therapy (PDT) has been used for decades to treat forms of skin and bladder cancers. It works by flooding a patient's body with light-sensitive chemicals that accumulate in cancer cells. Shining a light on the patient activates the chemicals and kills the diseased cells.
The light causes the chemicals to generate highly reactive oxygen molecules—like tiny biochemical firecrackers—that break down cancer cells from the inside while leaving healthy cells unharmed.
Researchers find cancer's 'off-grid' power supply – and how to cut it
By Michael Franco
February 13, 2025
Researchers have discovered a particular type of cancer cell that relies on its own biological electric utility company to thrive. Disrupting this power plant – with the help of a puffer fish – showed a breakthrough way to fight the tumors.
Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is a highly malignant and very aggressive type of cancer responsible for about 13% of all lung cancers. It is also sneaky. Typically, by the time the disease is diagnosed, it has already metastasized, making it extremely hard to treat.
Now, researchers from the Francis Crick Institute (FCI) have discovered that some of the cells involved with the formation of SCLC tumors demonstrate high levels of electrical activity. They've also determined the source of this power boost and say that using neurological drugs that typically disrupt electrical signals could be a powerful way to fight SCLC and, potentially, other tumors that operate in the same way.
Yale scientists have discovered a new potential treatment avenue to fight cancer. Using CRISPR gene-editing, the team eliminated extra chromosomes from cancer cells and found that they could no longer grow out of control.
Healthy human cells have 23 pairs of chromosomes, but it’s been observed for over a century that the majority of cancer cells have extras. This condition is known as aneuploidy, but its exact role in cancer remained a mystery – was it a root cause of cancer or just a symptom of it? In a new study, scientists at Yale investigated that role.
“For a long time, we could observe aneuploidy but not manipulate it,” said Jason Sheltzer, senior author of the study. “We just didn’t have the right tools. But in this study, we used the gene-engineering technique CRISPR to develop a new approach to eliminate entire chromosomes from cancer cells, which is an important technical advance. Being able to manipulate aneuploid chromosomes in this way will lead to a greater understanding of how they function.”
To start with, the team focused on a type of aneuploidy where a cell gains a third copy of a structure called the “q arm” on chromosome 1. This mistake is found in multiple cancer types from an early stage and is linked to disease progression.
Relevant:
Study uncovers how cancer cells thrive with extra chromosomes
A team of researchers has developed a "gut-on-chip" (a miniature model of the human intestine on a chip-sized device) capable of reproducing the main features of intestinal inflammation and of predicting the response of melanoma patients to immunotherapy treatment. The results have just been published in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
The interaction between microbiota and immunotherapy has long been known. It is the result of both systemic effects, i.e., the immune response elicited in the entire body by immunotherapy, and local processes, especially in the gut, where most of the bacteria that populate our body live. However, the latter can only be studied in animal models, with all their limitations.
mRNA vaccines show promise in pancreatic cancer in early trial
Personalized mRNA vaccines show promise as pancreatic cancer treatment, a phase 1 clinical trial published Wednesday in Nature found.
Fewer than 13% of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer live for more than five years, making it one of the deadliest types of cancer. That is, in part, because around 90% of cases are diagnosed when the disease is already advanced.
Pancreatic cancer cells also spread to other parts of the body much earlier on than in other cancers, which typically spread only when the original tumors are large. The disease typically doesn’t cause symptoms until later stages and there isn’t a routine screening for this cancer, such as a mammogram or colonoscopy.
Once it’s detected, there are few effective treatments.
