WASHINGTON: A team led by an Indian-origin scientist has identified a group of little-explored cancer cells that may play a key role in preventing the progression of the disease, a finding they say could lead to re-evaluation of common cancer treatments for patients.
The study, published in the journal Cancer Cell, also suggested that anti-angiogenic therapies that targets those tumour cells - called pericytes - may inadvertently be making tumours more aggressive and likely to spread. Advanced drugs shrink tumours by cutting off their blood supply, but in doing so they wipe out pericytes that provide structural support to blood vessels and act as 'gatekeepers' to pen in cancer.
Conducted at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, the study highlights the importance of more research on tumour-cell composition in order to devise more effective therapies, the researchers said.
"Not everything present in the tumour is bad for us. Pericyte functionality and coverage on blood vessels, is important because it allows the blood vessels to be leakfree and normal," said lead author Raghu Kalluri, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
The implications of this study show how today's practice of targeting pericytes as a form of treatment may come at a price, Kalluri explained. For the study, Kalluri and his team created genetically modified mice to support drug-induced depletion of pericytes in growing tumours. They then deleted pericytes in their cancer tumours, reducing pericyte numbers by 60%.
Compared with wild-type controls, they saw a 30% decrease in tumour volumes over 25 days.
The study, published in the journal Cancer Cell, also suggested that anti-angiogenic therapies that targets those tumour cells - called pericytes - may inadvertently be making tumours more aggressive and likely to spread. Advanced drugs shrink tumours by cutting off their blood supply, but in doing so they wipe out pericytes that provide structural support to blood vessels and act as 'gatekeepers' to pen in cancer.
Conducted at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, the study highlights the importance of more research on tumour-cell composition in order to devise more effective therapies, the researchers said.
"Not everything present in the tumour is bad for us. Pericyte functionality and coverage on blood vessels, is important because it allows the blood vessels to be leakfree and normal," said lead author Raghu Kalluri, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
The implications of this study show how today's practice of targeting pericytes as a form of treatment may come at a price, Kalluri explained. For the study, Kalluri and his team created genetically modified mice to support drug-induced depletion of pericytes in growing tumours. They then deleted pericytes in their cancer tumours, reducing pericyte numbers by 60%.
Compared with wild-type controls, they saw a 30% decrease in tumour volumes over 25 days.
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