Bone marrow cells may slow tumour growth
Friday 7th October 2011
Doctors may be able to use bone marrow cells to slow the growth of tumours, following the results of a research programme that will be published in the November issue of the American Journal of Pathology.
Bone marrow-derived cells (BMDCs) were investigated in a mouse model that was used to track the migration of cells while tumours grew.
Monitoring tumour growth via optical imaging, researchers at the Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute found that the tumours contained many types of BMDCs, and that their growth was reduced in mice that received bone marrow transplants.
"Our results provide an excellent in vivo experimental model where the temporal dynamics of tumour-infiltrating BMDCs may be monitored in an immunocompetent host and novel therapies targeting BMDCs for the inhibition of tumour progression may be investigated," said Wafik S El-Deiry of the Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute.
"In the future, it may be possible to use specific identified tumour-infiltrating BMDCs to deliver therapeutic cargo."
While cancer has been traditionally viewed by doctors as a disease in which transformed cells grow and invade living tissues, the researchers believe their findings suggest the disease is in fact more complex than this.
They believe cancer is a disease that takes place in a heterogeneous microenvironment where multiple cellular interactions are occurring within the affected tissue.
"This ongoing war on cancer within this tumor microenvironment has surprising twists and turns," added Professor El-Deiry.
The research comes soon after a new study, due to be published in an upcoming issue of Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention, which suggested that liver cancer incidence rates are continuing to increase in low-risk parts of the world, such as North America, while decreasing in higher-risk countries in Asia.
It is believed the trend could be partly down to increased chronic HCV infection as a result of unscreened blood transfusions and intravenous drug use.
Written by Angela Newbury
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