Cancer treatment new Testing Shows Promise in

A new method of attack on cancer cells by researchers in Australia, has been surprisingly effective animal testing.

The method is to circumvent the two main disadvantages of standard chemotherapy: treatment of the lack of specificity and the fact that often the resistance of cancer cells.

In a high use of the method, reported online Sunday in Nature Biotechnology, mice were implanted with a human uterine tumor was very aggressive and resistant to many drugs. All treated animals were free of tumor cells after 70 days of treatment, untreated mice were dead after a month.

Researchers conduct, Jennifer A. MacDiarmid and Himanshu Brahmbhatt, say their company, S-EnGeneIC Sydney, has a similar result in dogs developed brain tumors. "We treat more than 20 dogs and the results are spectacular," said Dr Brahmbhatt. "Thus, although each dog, and some are in remission. These experiments have not yet been published.

Cancer experts who are not seeking to say that the new method is of great interest, but that many treatments, even in laboratory mice as ineffective in patients.

Bert Vogelstein, a cancer of the main researchers from Johns Hopkins University, the creative approach and a track promising research, but found opposition to the overall success.

"Unfortunately, our experience shows that less than 1 percent of our promising indeed rank among the patients," he said.

EnGeneIC The researchers said they had passed the safety tests in a large number of monkeys and safety studies in patients with all types of solid tumors in three hospitals in Melbourne next month. They said they had discussed their technology licensing with major pharmaceutical companies and others.

Stephen H. Freund, director of Cancer Research at Merck, earlier this year, he said after EnGeneIC work for more than a year, and commended the company for the test method, the other had written, without trying .

"I consider that the approach is remarkable, and more interesting," said Dr. Friend, who is now at Sage BIONETWORKS in Seattle. But he warned that cancer cells are highly versatile and can be to put pressure on them, "so that no single approach that will heal.

The method uses EnGeneIC mini cells for a large number of players on the tumor cells, including anti-toxins and mechanisms of repression of toxin genes against tumors.

The cells are mini mutants of bacteria, each time, when they share a pinch of small bubbles of the cell membrane. Mini cells can be loaded with chemicals and coated with antibodies that directly to tumor cells.

No tumor cells, insofar as we know, a surface molecule specific toxins on the action. But 80% of solid tumors have their extra-bespickt cells with large amounts of the receptor for a hormone known as epidermal growth factor.

Mini cells can covered with an antibody that recognizes these receptors, so more to stick to the tumors than in normal cells of the body. To tumor cells and destroy mini cells, a lack of defense against bacteria, and it is, regardless of the load cells mini bear.

Which helps the cells to direct mini tumors, researchers say that EnGeneIC blood vessels in tumors are usually leaks, and mini-cells are small enough traffic fleeing pages.

The mini-cells do not seem very provocative to the immune system, even if bacterial cells. The reason could be that the elements of provocation on the membrane are masked by antibodies, the cells are coated mini, said Dr Brahmbhatt.

In experiments reported Sunday, EnGeneIC treats cancer in mice with two waves of mini cells. The first wave, a substance that suppresses a gene for resistance to toxins. The gene is a protein that pumps toxin cells, and is a major reason for the resistance, the tumors often chemotherapy.

Once the toxin gene was demolished emissions in tumor cells, researchers injected EnGeneIC a second wave of mini-cells, each responsible for half a million molecules of doxorubicin, a toxin with chemotherapy.

The two waves of treatment arrested tumor growth in mice, either with human settlement, colon or breast tumors of human, and activate the mouse tumors resistant human cervical tumors in total.

"Technology is great," said Bruce Stillman, President of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island. It proposes a general method for the supply of chemicals to cancer, he said, especially those who are normally in the blood decreased.

Dr. Stillman, advisers and EnGeneIC is a co-author of the report, said the mini cells could be particularly useful for the delivery of RNA Silencing, a promising new class of medicines which can be quickly destroyed in the body, unless , free.

Although the mini-cells can vary for different receptors to attack and the import of Gen-interest on the elements of sight plasmids, the method still several obstacles to jump.

Robert Hoffman of the University of California, San Diego, said the mini-cells have been "a good strategy and good science, but researchers have had human settlement, tumors of the skin of mice , a position which not normally by the body. As well as attempts not to answer the question whether the metastasis of cancer cells mini attack, he said.

Dr. Hoffmann, President of Anticancer Inc., the high relief metastatic cancer in mice, in collaboration with salmonella. The bacteria have been developed for the absence of two types of amino acids that are not able to grow in normal tissue. In cancer cells, but the lack of amino acids are richer, the bacteria are highly virulent and kill cells.

The idea of treating cancer by bacteria goes back to the 19th century, where doctors found that cancer patients, the disease, sometimes on an adoption. Both Dr. Hoffman method and mini cells, in various ways to restore the old comments. Both can be with the controls of the regulatory authorities concerned by the prospect that bacteria in the population.

Said Dr Hoffmann studied at the bacteria were defective and that his company could be ready for a discussion of patient safety in two years, when they find a good partner. The use of bacteria in the treatment of cancer, is an old story, but it is certainly a lot of promise there, "he says