Targeting stem cells early could be key to bowel cancer prevention
New research indicates stem cells - believed to play a key role in the development of cancer - could be sensitive to existing cancer drugs but only if they are treated very early on.
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Hide AdResearcher Michael Hodder from the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute in Glasgow studied the role of stem cells in the guts of mice that had been bred to mimic a human hereditary condition called familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP).
People with the condition carry a fault in a gene called adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) and have a greater than 95% chance of developing bowel cancer.
Scientists found that an existing cancer treatment called Cisplatin could prevent cancer in the mice if used at a very early stage.
They found that pre-cancerous stem cells were more sensitive to Cisplatin than normal stem cells in the gut of the mice.
Mr Hodder said: “For people with FAP who inherit an extremely high risk of bowel cancer, there is a clear benefit to being able to prevent tumours.
“This research is in mice, not in humans, but it does present the possibility that targeting stem cells could be a route to preventing tumours in people with a very high risk of bowel cancer.
“Cisplatin is a powerful cancer drug that can cause serious side-effects, so we will need to discover whether it can work on pre-cancerous stem cells at very low doses, or whether we can find other drugs that have the same effect but with fewer side-effects.”
The findings will be presented at the NCRI Cancer Conference in Glasgow today (Tuesday).