New Anti-Cancer Agents Show Promise for Treating Aggressive Breast Cancers

ScienceDaily (July 19, 2011) — Some of the most aggressive forms of breast cancer are more vulnerable to chemotherapy when it is combined with a new class of anti-cancer agent, researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute have shown.

ABT-737 is one of a new class of anti-cancer agents called BH3 mimetics that target and neutralise the so-called Bcl-2 proteins in cancer cells. Bcl-2 proteins act to 'protect' the cells after they have been damaged by chemotherapy drugs, and prevent the cancer cells from dying.
Professors Geoff Lindeman and Jane Visvader, who led the research with colleagues Dr Samantha Oakes and Dr François Vaillant from the institute's Stem Cells and Cancer division, said that the BH3 mimetics showed promise for treating breast cancers, including 'triple negative' cancers. Their research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Triple negative breast cancers are so-called because they test negative for oestrogen, progesterone and HER2 receptors, and cannot be treated with hormone therapy or trastuzumab. They account for up to 20 per cent of all breast cancers and are typically aggressive with a poor prognosis.
Dr Lindeman said that early results suggest navitoclax (an orally-available BH3 mimetic) could provide new hope for treating some breast cancers that are not candidates for other currently available treatments.
"ABT-737 targets proteins from the Bcl-2 family, which are found at high levels in up to 70 per cent of breast cancers," Dr Lindeman said. "We have shown that breast tumours that have high levels of Bcl-2 respond well to treatment with ABT-737 when used in combination with a conventional chemotherapy drug."
ABT-737 and navitoclax were discovered by Abbott scientists and are based on the discovery made at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in the 1980s that Bcl-2 is a 'pro-survival' protein responsible for preventing cell death in healthy and diseased cells. ABT-737 and navitoclax are not yet available for patient treatment, but navitoclax is currently in phase II clinical trials to establish its efficacy in treating some types of leukemia and lymphoma. Navitoclax is being jointly developed by Abbott and Genentech, Inc.
Dr Visvader said combined treatment with ABT-737 and docetaxel (a commonly used chemotherapy drug for treating breast cancer) in mice transplanted with human breast cancer cells improved tumour response and survival rates, when compared to docetaxel as a single agent. ABT-737 alone was not effective in treating cancers with high levels of Bcl-2, nor was it effective in treating cancers that did not express Bcl-2.
"The research suggests that these agents make the cancer cells more vulnerable to chemotherapy," Dr Visvader said. "We are particularly excited that the research shows a good response in Bcl-2-expressing breast cancer, including basal-like breast cancer, which is often the most aggressive and hardest to treat."
Dr Lindeman said the research could lead to the development of new treatment regimens that make resistant and difficult-to-treat breast cancers more vulnerable to conventional chemotherapy treatments. "We have had a good result in pre-clinical models of disease, but we are still a way off this being used in humans," Dr Lindeman, who is also an oncologist at The Royal Melbourne Hospital, said. "We hope that these results could see a clinical trial of navitoclax for treating breast cancer with high Bcl-2 levels within the next few years."
The project was supported by the Victorian Breast Cancer Research Consortium through the Victorian Cancer Agency, the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australian Cancer Research Foundation and the National Breast Cancer Foundation. Breast cancer samples were provided with the support of the Victorian Cancer Biobank.

Source :  ScienceDaily

New Anti-tumor compounds from Curcumin

From the results of research conducted by Chieko Kudo, Hiroyuki Yamakoshi, Atsuko Sato, Hiroshi Nanjo, Hisatsugu Ohori, Chikashi Ishioka, Yoshiharu Iwabuchi and Hiroyuki Shibata titled "Synthesis of 86 species of 1,5-diaryl-3-oxo-1, 4 -pentadienes analogs of curcumin can yield a good lead in vivo "published by BioMed. Stating that they successfully synthesize new anti-tumor compounds.

Curcumin is known to have many anti-tumor such as tumor growth inhibition and induction apotosis. However, the limited bioavailability of curcumin prevented clinical application. A synthesized curcumin analogues, 1,5-diaryl-3-oxo-1 ,4-pentadiene as GO-Y030, has the potential for increased anti-tumor in vitro and in mouse models of colorectal carcinogenesis.

From the results of tests on mice, they found a survival rate of mice given the compounds synthesized. The conclusions of their research are:

The 1,5-diaryl-3-oxo-1 ,4-pentadiene analogs can yield good lead compounds for cancer chemotherapy, to Overcome the low bioavailability of curcumin.

For the full article on this research. You can read it at the following link;
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2210/11/4 

“Get to Know what is cancer”

All over the world, cancer is known to be as one of the most deadly disease ever to have affected the human race. Most of the medical researchers all over the world, consider cancer to be a “metabolic disease”. Metabolic diseases are those diseases, which are known to affect the metabolism rate of the human body. As already said, we know that cancer has been concluded as to be a “metabolic disease” and that conclusion has been drawn from the fact that, cancer as a disease affects the human cells in the body.

Cells are microscopic living units in the body, which together form all living organs in the body. At any given time or state, the human body is made up of a billion cells, which together constitute the human organs. Cancer as a disease is considered to be a very deadly disease, just because of the fact that the disease affects the human cells. In cancer, abnormal and unusual cells crop up in the human body and they grow and spread in the human body at an alarming and fast rate. The abnormal cells grow and star spreading at a very fast rate. Usually, the normal cells divide and grow up to a certain level and then they die after a little time, unlike the unusual cells which do not follow the normal rate of growth and division. The cancer cells keep on dividing and continue growing on unlike the usual cells. The cancer cells unlike the usual cells do not die and start getting clumped together, which in turn forms a tumor.

It is said that cancer actually is a stage in the body when the cells turn, “trophoblastic”. Trophoblastic is a situation in the human body, when the cells in the human body tend to multiply at a faster rate than the normal. This stage can be explained for example, when a human body gets an external or internal injury, then the cells of the human body start the healing process, by starting to multiply. In case, the cells are in a trophoblastic stage, then although the cells start healing, but they don’t stop multiplying, thereby causing a lump. This in medical term is also called as a tumor. This lump goes numb even if the body controls the growth of the trophoblastic cells and proves to be highly injurious if the cells keep spreading. The removal of such tumor would rather lead to the uncontrolled growth of those trophoblastic cells, because of more effected sited due to the operation, and thus result in increasing the cancer.

The known medical treatments for cancer are radiation therapy and chemotherapy. But neither radiation therapy is effective due to the reason it creates more wounded parts and thus increases the cancer cells, nor chemotherapy is effective because it adversely effects the immune system of the body and the body holds no-more ability of natural healing.