Specialty sugar used to target cancer cell suicide switch

[Emily]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228415.200-cancer-cells-poisoned-with-sugar.html

Cancer cells poisoned with sugar

04 December 2011
New Scientist Magazine issue 2841.

IT'S a heavy price to pay for a sweet tooth. Researchers have tricked glucose-eating cancer cells into consuming a sugar that essentially poisons them - it leaves a "suicide" switch within the cells open to attack....

Then this drug is launched against the vulnerable cancer cells. The researchers are hoping to start a clinical trial at UC San Diego.

Cancer Research, DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.can-11-3091

[mixin]

Re: Specialty sugar used to target cancer cell suicide switch

Thanks for posting that article. That's good news.

Here is some additional info from the UC San Diego link in the New Scientist article:

The new two-part therapy described by Perkins and Yamaguchi:

Cells primed with 2-DG are then exposed to a pair of drugs, ABT-263/737, which signal the internal protein to initiate cell death. The two-step approach successfully induced apoptosis in leukemia, hepatocarcinoma, lung, breast and cervical cancers. Yamaguchi said it caused cell death at many stages of cancer development, including a difficult-to-treat, chemo-resistant, highly metastasized form of prostate cancer.

http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressreleases/new_drug_combo_targets_multiple_cancers/

[Emily]

Re: Specialty sugar used to target cancer cell suicide switch

Thanks for the additional information, Mixin. This sounds very promising and hope the clinical trials are a big success. I'm all for fighting risk factors for cancer, but a fairly benign treatment is needed for the many cases that cannot be avoided for a variety of reasons.

[mixin]

Re: Specialty sugar used to target cancer cell suicide switch

Having a fairly benign treatment would be wonderful for the chemo patients; I know that some of the treatments for advanced breast cancer are brutal.

In fact, a recent study finds that just having breast cancer causes impairment in areas of the brain; chemo adds to the problems:

Women with breast cancer, whether or not they had had chemotherapy, demonstrated significant neurological impairment ? reduced activation in the left middle dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and premotor cortex ? compared with healthy controls.

The authors found that women who had had chemotherapy ?also demonstrated significantly reduced left caudal lateral prefrontal cortex activation and increased perseverative errors and reduced processing speed? than either of the other two groups.

http://www.onmedica.com/newsArticle.aspx?id=2031b981-49d8-4205-a144-aa9ea82d5176

I see this experimental treatment will not damage the sugar-loving brain cells since ABT-263/737 cannot cross the body?s blood-brain barrier.

GS found the full study:

Efficient Elimination of Cancer Cells by Deoxyglucose-ABT-263/737 Combination Therapy
Ryuji Yamaguchi, Edith Janssen, Guy Perkins, Mark Ellisman, Shinichi Kitada, and John C. Reed

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3176271/?tool=pubmed