Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have recently developed a stem cell technique that will greatly decrease the toxic side effects of chemotherapy for brain cancer patients. The method uses stem cells that have been genetically modified to resist chemotherapy to protect vulnerable bone marrow and blood cells while allowing the chemotherapy to kill brain cancer cells. This Hutchinson Center stem cell research was made possible by nearly $1.8 million in NIH funding.
Chemotherapy always produces negative side effects in cancer patients. However, in the case of the glioblastoma brain cancer these effects are particularly severe. Glioblastoma is a terminal form of brain cancer with no known curative treatment. The median survival time for patients diagnosed with glioblastoma is just 12 to 15 months. This is in part due to the relative ineffectiveness of the best available treatment, chemotherapy.
(image of glioblastoma tumor courtesy of Christaras A on Wikipedia commons)
Glioblastoma cells make a large amount of MGMT protein which causes them to be resistant to chemotherapy. The only way that the treatment can be effective is in combination with the drug benzylguanine which knocks down MGMT levels. However, benzylguanine also destroys MGMT production in healthy blood and bone marrow cells thus greatly increasing their vulnerability to the chemotherapy. For patients with glioblastoma, the negative impact of chemotherapy on the bone marrow and blood stream is so severe that the treatment often can't be administered in high enough dosages to kill the cancerous cells.
Hans-Peter Kiem and Jennifer Adair, of the Hutchinson Center’s Clinical Research Division, and Maciej Mrugala, of the University of Washington collaborated on a clinical trial that used genetically-modified bone marrow stem cells to help combat this problem.
In the study, bone marrow stem cells were removed from several brain cancer patients and then infused with a chemotherapy-resistant gene using a retrovirus vector. After the cells were injected back into the patient they remained for more than one year with no apparent harmful side effects. These results suggest that using modified stem cells represents a safe and effective method for reducing chemotherapy side effects while successfully attacking brain cancer cells.
The researchers will continue with clinical trial to determine this treatments effectiveness for gliablastoma patients. Additionally, they hope that this study will provide important safety and feasibility information for the use of stem cell gene therapies to fight other diseases such as AIDS and genetic disorders.
If you are Hutchinson Center researcher interested in meeting industry reps and networking with top science suppliers in the Seattle life science community, plan on registering to attend Biotechnology Calendar's BioResearch Product Faire™ Event at the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center on October 26, 2011.
