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Harvard researchers are developing the first drug that specifically targets cancer stem cells.

 

Harvard Medical School researchers have identified a class of cells that initiates skin-cancer melanomas; they are also developing a therapy that specifically targets these cells. In a major study, the researchers characterized these cells and linked them to disease progression in humans. They also demonstrated that an antibody targeting these cells slows tumor growth in mice. The work may lead to new treatments for resistant melanoma. It also has broader implications for cancer biology.

 

There is a growing consensus amongst cancer biologists that not all cancer cells are equal. There is a hierarchy of cells inside a tumor, and only a few cells, called cancer ctem cells, are capable of generating new tumors. Such tumor-initiating cells have been identified in many cancers, including those of the colon, brain, and breast. These cells are also thought to play an important role in chemotherapy resistance and cancer recurrence.

 

Previously, researchers had connected the presence of cancer stem cells with breast-cancer patient outcomes. Now the Harvard team has demonstrated a second important connection between cancer stem cells and clinical impacts, linking the presence of such cells with the speed at which the disease progressed in humans.

 

"We've defined for the fist time a direct link between cancer stem cells and cancer progression," says Markus Frank, and assistant professor at Havard Medical School, who led the melanoma research.

 

This research grew out of Frank's study of a protein made by some melanomas that confers resistance to chemotherapy. Ina paper published today in the journal Nature, Frank and his colleagues at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, in Boston, rdport that human melanoma cells that make this protein can be characterized as cancer stem cells because they generate tumors when implanted in mice. Examining melanoma biopsies, they found that tumors expressing this protein were more aggressive.

 

Frank's group also demonstrated that an antibody specifically targeting the melanoma stem-cell protein soled tumor growh in mice. Many other researchers are working on therapies that attack cancer stem cells. but Franck believes that group is th e first to develop such an antibody.

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