Science

Lab Creates More Potent Form of Cancer for Research

Cancer in mice just got deadlier thanks to Harvard instructor Tan Ince, and humans with breast cancer may benefit. Ince developed a recipe that turns normal cells into breast cancer stem cells — the kind that can initiate tumors and spread. Cancer stem cells are difficult to isolate from tissue biopsies as they are exceedingly […]

Cancer in mice just got deadlier thanks to Harvard instructor Tan Ince, and humans with breast cancer may benefit. Ince developed a recipe that turns normal cells into breast cancer stem cells -- the kind that can initiate tumors and spread.

Cancer stem cells are difficult to isolate from tissue biopsies as they are exceedingly rare -- about one in a million, Ince told HealthDay News. Their importance cannot be understated, as cancers that spread to other areas of the body (metastatic cancers) are responsible for the majority of cancer deaths. (Cancers metastasize when a cancer stem cell "breaks off" of the tumor and travels through the body to another location.)

Tumor cell lines that pharmaceutical companies have been testing their drug candidates on lack a significant number of cancer stem cells, so their effect could only be tested superficially in petri dishes. Ince's recipe produces a high percentage of these deadly cells, with the result of as "many as one in ten is a cancer stem cell," according to MIT.

"Until now, most of the drug testing had been done on standard tumor cell lines that only have very few tumor stem cells in them," Ince explained. "So, even if a drug killed 99 percent of tumor cells in a Petri dish, that would not have been a guarantee that this drug actually had killed any of the tumor stem cells."

Ince's recipe allows researchers to grow tissue with a significantly higher number of cancer stem cells, allowing companies to more rapidly screen for stem cell killing drugs; kill the cancer stem cells, kill the cancer -- or so the hope goes.

Exactly how deadly are these cells?

Ince started injecting fewer and fewer cells into the mice and
watching them for longer and longer.

"I still saw tumors when I went down to as few as 10
cells," he said. "Then I watched for 10 to 12 weeks, and
I saw small metastases of several cells, micrometastases, in about
75 to 80 percent of the mice."

Ouch.

Scientists Create Breast Tumor Stem Cells [HealthDay News]