Researchers Discover Compound That Kills Cancer Stem Cells
U.S researchers have discovered a compound which could revolutionize breast cancer treatment. The compound kills the breast cancer stem cells that are responsible for growing new cancer cells. They are called "master cells" and before this scientists have been unable to kill them.
"There is a lot of evidence to suggest now that these cells are responsible for many of the recurrences that are observed after treatment has stopped," Piyush Gupta of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Broad Institute, whose study appears in the journal Cell, said in a telephone interview on Thursday.
The problem is that cancer stem cells are rare and difficult to study in the lab because they quickly change into other types of cells. And they are hard to kill.
"It wasn't clear it would be possible to find compounds that selectively kill cancer stem cells," Gupta said in a statement. "That's what we did."
*****
A chemical called salinomycin hit the target. It was 100 times more potent at killing breast cancer stem cells than Bristol-Myers Squibb Co's cancer drug Taxol, or paclitaxel.
Cancer stem cells treated with salinomycin were far less able to start breast cancers when injected into mice than cancer stem cells treated by paclitaxel. And the treatment also appeared to slow the growth of tumors in the mice.
Gupta said it is not clear if salinomycin will emerge as the best drug compound for killing breast cancer stem cells — or that it will be safe to use in people with cancer.
But the study offers a new roadmap for drug companies to isolate and test compounds capable of killing the cells.
Although the research is groundbreaking, unfortunately it won't lead to a quick cure for cancer. Thee is much more research to be done before human trials can be started. With luck, a treatment using the compound could be available in a few years, the scientists said.
