STAT3 Inhibitors Can Help or Harm Glioblastoma Patients
A study led by the Harvard School of Medicine provides evidence that targeted chemotherapies commonly used to treat glioblastoma may do more harm than good for some patients.
Glioblastoma is a rare form of brain cancer with a poor survival rate. STAT3 inhibitors are one of the few therapies available to treat the disease, but Harvard’s study indicates the patient’s genetic profile determines whether STAT3 genes act as oncogenes that promote tumor development or suppressors that work to stop cancer.
To arrive at their findings, researchers from Harvard and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute studied astrocytes in mice. Their investigation revealed mutations in two other genes, EGFR and PTEN, affected the function of STAT3 thereby determining whether it kept cancerous cells in check or helped their formation. Specifically, when EGFR mutated and interacted with STAT3, it turned STAT3 into an oncogene, but when PTEN mutated it transformed STAT3 into a tumor suppressor. The scientists later confirmed their surprising results in human glioblastoma tumors.
The discovery has important implications for glioblastoma patients because STAT3 has long been believed to cause the cancer. As the study’s senior author explained,
“This discovery lays the foundation for a more tailored therapeutic intervention. And that’s really important. You can’t just go blindly treating people by inhibiting STAT3.”
Azad Bonni, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School
The team’s findings could impact studies on more common cancers as well — STAT3 has also been implicated in some breast and prostate cancers.
If you’d like to learn more, results of the study are published in the February 7, 2008, online edition of Genes and Development.
Source: Harvard Medicine News Alert
Related Links: National Brain Tumor Foundation; Society for Neuroscience; biologynews.net
Related Podcast: Human U87MG Cells Transduced with a Dominant Negative p53 (Tp53) Adenovirus Construct Undergo Radiation-Induced Mitotic Catastrophe from the Radiation Research Society
Technorati Tags: glioma; neuro-oncology; neurology; Stewart Trust of Washington, DC; Armenise-Harvard Foundation; Carolyn and Peter Lynch Research Fund; Boston, MA
Print This
|
|
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Browse All Categories: Next article: Cancer Becomes Clearer With Lensless X-Ray Camera
Previous article: Canine Cancer Patients Benefit from Cliff Book
