Shutting down a disease
OU researchers hope find could lead to new cancer therapies

From Staff Reports

Published: March 21, 2008

Researchers at the OU Cancer Institute say they have found a way to turn off a protein in cancer cells that causes tumors to grow.

The new approach could lead to better and more complete therapies for colon cancer patients. The research appears this month in the online version of the journal Gastroenterology.

Cancer biologists Dr. Courtney Houchen and Shrikant Anant and their research team at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center found that disruption of genetic signals leading to the creation of a critical protein not only halted the protein but caused cancer cells to die and tumors to stop growing.

By targeting the protein, OU scientists killed all of the cancer cells in the tumor, including the stem cells, which have the ability to wait until after chemotherapy or radiation treatments to begin dividing. Current therapies generally do not target stem cells in tumors.

Researchers believe these stem cells often are responsible for the return of cancer after treatment.

"Killing cancer cells is like cutting off your hair. If you don't cut the root, it will grow back,” Houchen said. "Chemotherapy is geared toward attacking rapidly dividing cells, so dormant stem cells potentially sit there and when therapy is over, they can activate.”

Researchers think the protein is responsible for telling cells to divide and grow. If a new therapy can inactivate the protein, it could keep stem cells from dividing and growing, keeping cancer from returning.

Houchen and Anant have tested their idea in the lab with cell culture systems and in animal tumor models with success.

If funding allows, researchers could begin clinical trials in five to seven years.

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