Study Cites New Cancer Treatment

Texas researchers say they have perfected a method to deliver a cancer treatment directly into tumors, bypassing healthy tissue.

The study was done on mice, but human trials could begin soon, said Dr. Michael Andreeff, one author of the study in today’s issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Researchers used the benefits of an anticancer therapy, interferon beta, that can kill cancer cells. That therapy has caused toxic side effects, and its benefits disappear within minutes of patients getting shots.

The research team manipulated a certain type of stem cell to encode the interferon beta gene. The guided stem cells then targeted tumor cells and produced high concentrations of therapeutic proteins within the tumor cells, Andreeff said.

Besides taming toxic side effects, the treatment remained in the tumor longer, he said in an interview.

Mice with human breast cancer treated with the engineered human stem cells survived for 60 days, according to the study. Mice treated with interferon beta alone lived for 41 days. Untreated mice survived for 37 days.

Andreeff said he was working on a protocol for a clinical trial to test the procedure in humans within a year, if the Food and Drug Administration agreed. Patients would be infused with the stem cell-delivered anticancer treatment four times a week, said Andreeff, a professor in the departments of blood and marrow transplantation and leukemia at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Andreeff’s research team did not see engineered stem cells drift into healthy organs such as the lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys or muscles.

The work builds on the promise of using stem cells to target brain tumors, outlined in a 2000 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.