New cancer research examines role of chemo and radiation in spreading tumors
Perhaps medical treatments putting cancer into remission are just artificially producing a middle stage of cancer before a more serious metastatic stage begins. That would appear to be one of the implications of a research report appearing in May’s issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
A research team led by Dr. Carlos Arteaga at Vanderbilt University tried suppressing Transforming Growth Factor(TGF)-beta in mice using antibodies. Suppressing TGF-beta stopped the spread of cancer tumors that would otherwise be spread as a result of treatment with radiation or doxorubicin, a chemotherapy agent. Either of these therapies causes TGF-beta to be produced in mice.
What’s more, tests on mice bred for the inability to produce TGF-beta showed similar results: despite the introduction of turmors followed by treatment with radiation and doxorubicin, their tumors did not spread. This research has led Arteaga and his colleagues to speculate that primary cancer tumors use TGF-beta as a signal to cancer cells at other sites in the body.
“We wondered if TGF-beta induced by anti-cancer therapies can serve as a survival signal for tumor cells, thus allowing them to withstand therapy and later recur,” Arteaga said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Arteaga’s team is testing drugs that interfere with TGF-beta to see if they improve survival.
“It probably isn’t just TGF-beta that is having this effect,” the researcher said. Many other compounds, including some immune system signaling chemicals, are also associated with tumor spread and growth.
“TGF-beta may be just the tip of the iceberg,” says Arteaga.
Cancer experts have wondered if the so-called primary tumor—the first and biggest tumor—might somehow suppress the growth of other tumors, and [if] removing or destroying the first tumor might allow other, undetectable, tumors to grow. –newmediaexplorer.org
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