Good news today from the American University of Beirut in the march to reduce suffering from cancer <http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2013/Sep-21/232017-lebanese-scientists-hope-for-breakthrough-against-leukemia.ashx#axzz2fdAF4UN1>. Here, a copy of the article, with the added hope that people around the world can better appreciate the resilience and dedication of scientists amid political strife.
Lebanese scientists hope for breakthrough against leukemiaSeptember 21, 2013 12:38 AMBy Kareem Shaheen
Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2013/Sep-21/232017-lebanese-scientists-hope-for-breakthrough-against-leukemia.ashx#ixzz2fdBTebFu
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)
Lebanese scientists hope for breakthrough against leukemiaSeptember 21, 2013 12:38 AMBy Kareem Shaheen
| The Daily Star |
 |
| People stand in front of the American University of Beirut Medical Center, Friday, Sept. 20, 2013. (The Daily Star/Hasan Shaaban) |
 |  |
BEIRUT: Scientists in Lebanon have developed a drug cocktail that they hope could cure a rare form of leukemia, in a milestone for cancer research in the region.
The drug combination targets Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML), a blood cancer that affects 1 in 100,000 people in Lebanon but whose prevalence is rising as patients use expensive drugs to live longer with the symptoms.
The researchers at the American University of Beirut Medical Center tested a combination of arsenic and interferon in mice injected with leukemic cells. A paper on the research was published this month in the International Journal of Cancer, a peer-reviewed publication.
Current treatments for CML are expensive, reaching up to $4,000 a month, and patients have to remain indefinitely on treatment because the primary drug in use, known as imatinib, does not cure the disease.
While imatinib targets the bulk of the tumor in CML, it does not affect the cancer stem cells, which can self-renew and generate new cancer cells if the treatment stops. The existing medication therefore controls the growth of the cancer, but does not cure it.
“I’m not from a rich family, I have sick people in my family and understand how it is important to have the money,” said Rihab Nasr, assistant professor of medicine in the Department of Anatomy, Cell Biology and Physiological Sciences at AUB and the project’s leader. “I wanted to find a treatment that cures.”
Both interferon and arsenic are used separately for cancer treatment. Arsenic is a toxin, but can be used in cancer treatment and may be instrumental in degrading the proteins that are central to cancer stem cell growth.
Nasr first tried the combination on cancer cell cultures that were collected from patients and kept alive in incubators in the lab, some of which were resistant to the current treatments.
The drug cocktail worked, and so Nasr moved on to try it on mice.
First, the scientists injected the mice with cells infected with a DNA fragment that carries a specific “oncogene,” which is a gene that can transform into a cancer cell that causes CML.
The mice developed leukemia within a few weeks. Then they were treated with the drug.
“And it worked,” Nasr said.
But to make sure the treatment was targeting the cancer stem cells that can multiply and renew the cancer, Nasr took the experiment one step further. She took samples from the bone marrow of the treated mice, where the cancer stem cells would have remained if they were not eradicated, and injected them into a second set of mice.
Most of the mice that received the treated bone marrow did not develop the cancer, and lived on to die essentially of old age.
“This tells me that the combination of arsenic and interferon is eradicating this small population of cancer stem cells,” she said.
Nasr and her fellow researchers will now look into why the interferon and arsenic combination works on the leukemia cells, a process that is not fully understood.
Nasr thinks the combination might be targeting a chain reaction that allows cancer stem cells to replicate, breaking down the cycle and causing them to die off.
Nasr said that advances in cancer research and technology are allowing the development of more advanced treatments. She would like to eventually carry out clinical trials to test the efficacy of the drug on humans, but she would need to do that in combination with other clinics and research centers abroad as the population with the disease in Lebanon is too small to prove whether the cure could work.
The disease is more common among older adults, between 40 and 50 years of age.
Still, she is hopeful because the combination could also mean an easier life for patients. Many cancer patients do not take well to interferon, for instance, but a drug combination would have a lower concentration of it, thus reducing side effects.
Nasr presented her findings in Europe and Qatar, where the foundation created by the country’s former emir funded part of her research.
She said that a major challenge for cancer researchers in Lebanon and the Middle East was often a lack of resources, and that scientists in Lebanon had the knowledge to make significant contributions to cancer research.
The drug combination targets Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML), a blood cancer that affects 1 in 100,000 people in Lebanon but whose prevalence is rising as patients use expensive drugs to live longer with the symptoms.
The researchers at the American University of Beirut Medical Center tested a combination of arsenic and interferon in mice injected with leukemic cells. A paper on the research was published this month in the International Journal of Cancer, a peer-reviewed publication.
Current treatments for CML are expensive, reaching up to $4,000 a month, and patients have to remain indefinitely on treatment because the primary drug in use, known as imatinib, does not cure the disease.
While imatinib targets the bulk of the tumor in CML, it does not affect the cancer stem cells, which can self-renew and generate new cancer cells if the treatment stops. The existing medication therefore controls the growth of the cancer, but does not cure it.
“I’m not from a rich family, I have sick people in my family and understand how it is important to have the money,” said Rihab Nasr, assistant professor of medicine in the Department of Anatomy, Cell Biology and Physiological Sciences at AUB and the project’s leader. “I wanted to find a treatment that cures.”
Both interferon and arsenic are used separately for cancer treatment. Arsenic is a toxin, but can be used in cancer treatment and may be instrumental in degrading the proteins that are central to cancer stem cell growth.
Nasr first tried the combination on cancer cell cultures that were collected from patients and kept alive in incubators in the lab, some of which were resistant to the current treatments.
The drug cocktail worked, and so Nasr moved on to try it on mice.
First, the scientists injected the mice with cells infected with a DNA fragment that carries a specific “oncogene,” which is a gene that can transform into a cancer cell that causes CML.
The mice developed leukemia within a few weeks. Then they were treated with the drug.
“And it worked,” Nasr said.
But to make sure the treatment was targeting the cancer stem cells that can multiply and renew the cancer, Nasr took the experiment one step further. She took samples from the bone marrow of the treated mice, where the cancer stem cells would have remained if they were not eradicated, and injected them into a second set of mice.
Most of the mice that received the treated bone marrow did not develop the cancer, and lived on to die essentially of old age.
“This tells me that the combination of arsenic and interferon is eradicating this small population of cancer stem cells,” she said.
Nasr and her fellow researchers will now look into why the interferon and arsenic combination works on the leukemia cells, a process that is not fully understood.
Nasr thinks the combination might be targeting a chain reaction that allows cancer stem cells to replicate, breaking down the cycle and causing them to die off.
Nasr said that advances in cancer research and technology are allowing the development of more advanced treatments. She would like to eventually carry out clinical trials to test the efficacy of the drug on humans, but she would need to do that in combination with other clinics and research centers abroad as the population with the disease in Lebanon is too small to prove whether the cure could work.
The disease is more common among older adults, between 40 and 50 years of age.
Still, she is hopeful because the combination could also mean an easier life for patients. Many cancer patients do not take well to interferon, for instance, but a drug combination would have a lower concentration of it, thus reducing side effects.
Nasr presented her findings in Europe and Qatar, where the foundation created by the country’s former emir funded part of her research.
She said that a major challenge for cancer researchers in Lebanon and the Middle East was often a lack of resources, and that scientists in Lebanon had the knowledge to make significant contributions to cancer research.
Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2013/Sep-21/232017-lebanese-scientists-hope-for-breakthrough-against-leukemia.ashx#ixzz2fdBTebFu
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)
No comments:
Post a Comment