Antibodies will increase the effectiveness of cancer treatment
"Silencer" for cancer cells
Scientists managed to overcome the survivability of tumor cells
in chemotherapy for pancreatic cancerLarisa Aksenova, Newspaper.
To increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer, one of the most aggressive, scientists suggest adding antibodies to standard medications that can block the signals of cancer cell survivability.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest and most unexplained forms of cancer with a very low five–year survival rate of only 6%. New methods of treatment are extremely necessary, since neither standard nor targeted therapy give the desired result. Patients develop drug resistance to drugs, and this becomes an unsolvable problem.
Previously, it was believed that the main reason for failures in the treatment of pancreatic cancer lies in the fact that drugs do not penetrate the tumor cells well. But recently, a group of scientists from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, USA, demonstrated that there are other factors that reduce the effectiveness of treatment.
In the article CTGF antagonism with mAb FG-3019 enhances chemotherapy response without increasing drug delivery in murine ductal pancreas cancer, published on July 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a group of scientists led by David Tuvezon reports that signaling molecules have been found in the tumor mass of the pancreas that are responsible for the survival of cancer cells. Molecules that are found in the intercellular fluid, such as connective tissue growth factor (CTGF), help cancer cells resist chemotherapy drugs. They transmit certain "survivability signals" to them. According to American scientists, these "survivability signals", using a certain biochemical mechanism, prevent apoptosis (cell suicide) of cancer cells.
As found out in the laboratory of Tuvezon, the problem in the treatment of pancreatic cancer is not only the difficulties with the targeted delivery of drugs to cancer cells, but also with their resistance to these drugs. It seems that scientists have found a way to change this situation. They found antibody proteins (FG-3019) that bind to CTGF molecules and block "survivability signals".
To test the effectiveness of FG-3019, scientists used a new line of mice – an experimental model of pancreatic cancer. It turned out that in mice treated with FG-3019 in combination with the chemotherapeutic drug gemcitabine, tumors stopped growing in size. And inside the tumor, the number of cancer cells dying from apoptosis grew. As a result, mice receiving complex treatment with FG-3019 and gemcitabine lived longer than their counterparts receiving only gemcitabine treatment without antibody support.
As a result, experts considered that it is possible to overcome the resistance of pancreatic tumor cells to drugs with the help of combination therapy – the complex administration of three types of molecules. The first will help make the tumor available for medications, the second will suppress the signal of resistance to drugs, and, finally, the third will directly carry out a chemotherapeutic attack on cancer cells.
The FG-3019 molecule is currently being tested in phase 1/2 clinical trials as a possible drug for the treatment of pancreatic cancer.
Researchers are also considering other candidate substances to increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy. They suggest that it is possible to use antagonists of those cellular proteins that prevent cells from following the path of apoptosis. They propose to test these antagonist molecules in the next experiment.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru09.07.2013