Researchers Isolate Cancerous Stem Cells
McMaster University researchers have discovered a way
to tell the difference between healthy and cancerous
stem cells.
They believe their study will pave the way for
scientists developing treatments and therapeutic drugs
for cancer patients.
The study, published yesterday in the journal Nature
Biotechnology, will help cancer therapy drug designers
target only the cancer cells and spare the
healthy ones, said Mick Bhatia, lead researcher.
“Now we can really pick apart the cancer cells,” said
Bhatia, scientific director of the McMaster Stem
Cell and Cancer Research Institute in the Michael G.
DeGroote School of Medicine.
Using human stem cells, Bhatia’s team of 70 researchers
were able to spot the difference between normal and
cancerous ones, an important distinction as most
scientists use mice in their research.
Stem cells are like the body’s super cell — unlike
mature cells, they can make copies of themselves and
can produce any type of tissue, like blood, lung, heart
or skin.
Cancer stem cells only have the ability to make copies
— and do so with “a heavy foot on the accelerator and
no discretion on when to put on the brakes,” explained
Bhatia.
These become the seeds that grow into malignant
tumours.
The difficulty has been that the normal and cancerous
stem cells have been difficult to differentiate and
much more complicated than researchers originally
thought, he said.
Now they can use this information to test out different
therapies to target only the cancerous stem cells.
When cancer patients go through chemotherapy and
radiation treatment, their bodies are often left
weakened, and their immune systems are compromised.
Their hair falls out, they dramatically lose weight and
their skin becomes paper-thin.
This is because the current anti-cancer treatments
don’t just target the malignant cells, they kill the
healthy cells surrounding the cancer.
“Right now, we can shrink a tumour, but it comes back,”
he said.
“Think of it like a dandelion — you pick the stem off,
but if you leave the root, it grows back.
“We don’t want it to grow back. We don’t want to just
shrink the tumour. We want to get rid of it.”
Using a $15-million grant from philanthropist David
Braley, they using robotic screening to test hundreds
of thousands of cancer treatments on the malignant stem
cells.
They also have funding from the Canadian Institute of
Health Research, the Canadian Cancer Society, the
National Cancer Institute of Canada and the Ontario
Institute of Cancer Research.
This has been an ongoing five-year study for Mac.
Bhatia, who was recruited to the university in 2006,
has since been involved in a number of major
breakthroughs and discoveries in stem cell
research.
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