Researchers from the hematology-oncology department at the Schneider Pediatric Center and Tel Aviv University, the Technion and the University of Glasgow participated in the study. The researchers discovered that a drug that inhibits the formation of fatty acids may inhibit the spread of leukemia to the brain. The discovery was published in the scientific journal Nature Cancer
An international group of researchers from Israel and Scotland reports in the prestigious scientific magazine Nature Cancer about a breakthrough that may affect the treatment of leukemia spreading to the brain. The group includes researchers from the hematological-oncology system at the Schneider Pediatric Center and Tel Aviv University, from the Technion and the University of Glasgow.
The said study focuses on acute lymphoblastic leukemia - the most common cancer in children. Although the recovery rates from this disease are relatively high, the treatment is difficult and accompanied by many side effects, which may appear years after recovery.
Since one of the greatest dangers in this disease is the spread of metastases to the brain, children diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia receive preventive treatment that protects the brain from such metastases. Today, this treatment is based on the injection of chemotherapy drugs into the spinal fluid, and sometimes also on radiation to the skull, and here too there is a problem of side effects. These result from damage to brain function because the same chemotherapy drugs also damage healthy brain cells. This is the background for the worldwide effort to develop more selective treatments, which will damage the leukemia cells only and not the brain cells. In the current study it became clear for the first time that the solution lies in fatty acids.
Fatty acids are an essential resource for the cell, and the leukemia cells also need them. In the bone marrow and blood, the leukemia cells find enough fatty acids, but when they migrate to the brain in the metastatic process, they reach an area very poor in fatty acids. In order to continue to exist and thrive there, as it turns out in a study that has just been published, they developed the ability to produce the said fatty acids themselves.
Based on these insights, the researchers estimated that treatment with drugs that suppress the formation of fatty acids will prevent the leukemia cells from producing these acids and thus "starve" them and will not allow them to thrive in the brain. Indeed, using such drugs in mice inhibited the development of metastatic leukemia in the brain.
The drugs used in the current study are drugs that are in development and therefore not yet approved for use in humans; However, the research findings open a new window for a more precise, and apparently less toxic, treatment that will prevent leukemia from spreading to the brain.
The article is the result of collaboration between research groups of three researchers and was carried out by three young researchers: Dr. Angela Maria Sabino from the laboratory of Prof. Shay Yazraeli From the Pediatric Hemato-Oncology Unit at the Schneider Pediatric Center of the Klalit Group and the Department of Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry at the Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, Dr. Sarah Isabel Fernandez from the laboratory of Prof. Eyal Gottlieb From the Rappaport Research Institute and the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion and Dr. Orian Olivaris from the laboratory of Dr. Christine Halsey from the University of Glasgow. A certain part of the research was carried out in the laboratory of Prof. Michael Hares at the Sloan Kettering Cancer Hospital in New York.
The research findings are relevant not only to acute lymphoblastic leukemia but also to other types of cancer in both children and adults. This is because most cancer deaths are not caused by the primary tumor but by the spread of metastases to distant organs. The current research, which indicates the adaptation of the cancer cells to the organs to which the metastases spread, paves the way for biological treatments that will block said adaptation mechanisms and thus stop the metastatic spread.
The study was supported by the Chief Scientist at the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Italian Cancer Research Foundation (FIRC), the William and Elizabeth Davis Foundation, the Laura and Ike Perlmutter Foundation, the Germany-Israel Foundation, the Norman and Sadie Lee Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the European Union (ERA NET TRASCALL program) , the Israel Cancer Research Foundation and Cancer Research UK.
This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon
2020 Research and Innovation Program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant
agreement META-CAN No. 766214.
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