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Pancreas Cancer News and Archives | |
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Gene Therapy Fights Pancreatic Cancer in Mice
But Japanese researchers are using gene therapy to achieve what they call "dramatic" results in shrinking pancreatic tumors in mice, even after the cancer has spread beyond the pancreas. Treatments like these targeted to specific cancer-causing genes "offer some hope for developing a novel approach to pancreatic cancer," write Dr. Masaru Oonuma and colleagues at Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine in Sendai, Japan. They report their findings in a recent issue of the International Journal of Cancer. Pancreatic cancer is most often a "silent killer," with no symptoms appearing until the malignancy has become very advanced. Surgery at this point is often out of the question, and drug therapy has limited success because pancreatic cancer cells are notoriously resistant to even the most powerful chemotherapy. One way to short-circuit drug resistance may be to target genes within cancer cells that help the cell dodge these medications. In their study, Oonuma's team first injected human-derived pancreatic cancer cells into mice. When the pancreatic cancer had spread beyond the pancreas itself into surrounding tissues, the researchers infected some of the mice with a harmless virus that also "piggybacked" a compound called uracil phosphoribosyl transferase (UPRT) to the area of malignancy. According to the researchers, UPRT effectively "switches on" a gene that works to overcome a cancer cell's resistance to chemotherapy. In fact, mice treated with a combination of gene therapy plus the powerful cancer drug 5-fluorouracil (5FU) "showed a dramatic tumor reduction without adverse effects," Oonuma and his colleagues report. Tumor shrinkage occurred both within the mouse pancreas and in the areas beyond the organ, while leaving normal tissues unharmed. Encouraged by their success, the Japanese team is conducting similar experiments in mice affected with human-derived liver tumors, as well. And they note that a human trial, using a very similar approach, is already under way in patients with head and neck cancers. Although much work needs to be done, and routine use of these types of therapies in the hospital setting is still years away, Oonuma and his colleagues call their gene therapy approach "a promising tool for targeting (metastatic) pancreatic cancer."
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