A University of Cincinnati (UC)
Cancer Institute lung cancer research team reports that lung cancer stem cells
can be isolated—and then grown—in a preclinical model, offering a new avenue
for investigating immunotherapy treatment options that specifically target stem
cells.
John C. Morris, MD, and his
colleagues report their findings in the Nov. 13, 2012, issue of PLOS One, a peer-reviewed online
publication that features original research from all disciplines within science
and medicine.
Stem cells are unique cells
that can divide and differentiate into specialized cells types—for example
cardiac muscle or liver
tissue. These cells also have the ability to self-renew and produce more
stem cells.
"Increasing evidence
supports the idea that cancerous
tumors have a population of stem cells, also called cancer-initiating
cells, that continually regenerate and fuel cancer growth," explains
Morris, senior author of the study and professor at the UC College of Medicine.
"These cancer stem cells may also have the highest potential to spread to
other organs."
Current models used to study
cancer stem cells provide limited information on the interaction between cancer
stem cells with the immune system, making the study of new therapies that
utilize the body's immune system to fight off cancer virtually impossible.
In this study, the UC team set
out to find a viable, consistent way to isolate lung cancer stem cells that
could be used in a mouse model with full immune system function.
The team was able to achieve this using a functional laboratory test known as
"tumorsphere" assay.
The test—which shows how cells
grow in culture—allowed them to enrich for cancer stem cells.
"Studying these unique cells
could greatly improve our understanding of lung cancer's origins and lead to
the novel therapeutics targeting these cells and help to more effectively
eradicate this disease," adds Morris. "Immunotherapy is the future
of cancer treatment.
We are hopeful that this new method will accelerate our investigation of
immunotherapies to specifically target cancer stem cells."
The team is working to
characterize how cancer stem cells escape the body's immune system in order to
develop more effective therapies that target stem cells.
"One of the hypotheses
behind why cancer therapies fail is that the drug only kills cells deemed to be
'bad' (because of certain molecular characteristics), but leaves behind stem
cells to repopulate the tumor," adds Morris. "Stem cells are not frequently
dividing, so they are much less sensitive to existing chemotherapies used to
eliminate cells deemed abnormal."
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