Brain tumor treatment in sight
Brain tumor is an intracranial tumor which represents a mass or growth of abnormal cells in a brain. There are several types of brain cancer, some of them being benign, some malignant. There are two main groups of types of brain cancer — primary and secondary. Primary are the ones that start in the brain, and secondary are the ones that start in other parts of the body and then spread onto the brain.
Researchers from UC Davis Cancer Center have announced today that they have found a molecule which targets glioblastoma, a very deady type of brain cancer, which is the most aggresive primary brain tumor.
“These brain tumors are currently treated with surgery to remove as much of the tumor as possible followed by radiation to kill cancer cells left behind and systemic chemotherapy to prevent spread to nearby tissues,” said Kit Lam, one of the researchers. “It is unfortunate that this approach does not extend survival significantly. Most patients survive less than one year.”
Lam, along with other colleagues, searched for a molecule that could be injected in patient’s body, and that would go directly to the tumor cells carrying the necessary drug. In their research, they have found that the molecule called LXY1 actually binds with high specificity to a particular cell-surface protein called alpha-3 integrin, which is overexpressed on cancer cells.
To test this, scientists implanted human glioblastoma cells into the brains of mice. After that, they injected a radiolabeled version of LXY1 and, using near-infrared fluorescence imaging, showed that the molecule did preferentially bind to human glioblastoma cells.
“This outcome gives us great hope that we will be able to deliver targeted therapies to treat glioblastoma,” said Lam.
The research was funded by National Institutes of Health. The research will be published in European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging in January 2009.
Source: ucdavis.edu
