Cancer: New technique could revolutionise treatment of prostate cancer
Scientists have developed a new technique that may revolutionise the treatment of prostate cancer. Researchers studying the disease, which is notoriously difficult to treat as most current therapies prove ineffective against it, have found that blocking the action of a gene called IGF1R can make prostate cancer cells more sensitive to chemotherapy.
A new technology called RNA interference, which can deactivate one of a cell's 35,000 genes, was used to block IGF1R. Switching off the gene made treatment-resistant cancerous cells twice as sensitive to radiotherapy. However, the technique made cancer cells more vulnerable to chemotherapy drugs that kill cells by damaging their DNA.
One of the most effective ways of treating prostate cancer is to starve it of the male hormones it feeds on in its early stages, said Dr Val Macaulay, Cancer Research UK's senior clinical research fellow at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine. However, at some point the cancer always becomes hormone independent and this form of treatment ceases to work.
"Prostate cancer is resistant to most chemotherapy drugs so there is an urgent need for new ways to tackle the disease. We found that blocking the IGF1R gene enhanced the effect of chemotherapy on hormone-independent prostate cancer cells," said Macaulay.
The breakthrough comes after previous work indicated that deactivating IGF1R could improve the impact of existing treatments on prostate cancer. Work is now underway to develop inhibitors of the gene.
