US breakthrough in live cancer cells
December 20, 2011
US researchers announced they have discovered how to keep tumour cells alive in the lab. – Photo by shutterstock.com
WASHINGTON,
Dec 20 – US researchers said yesterday they have discovered how to keep
tumour cells alive in the lab, generating buzz in the scientific
community about a potential breakthrough that could transform cancer
treatment.
Until now, scientists have been unable to make cancer cells thrive
for very long in the laboratory in a condition that resembles the way
they look and act in the body. Doctors have largely relied on biopsied
tissue that is frozen or set in wax to diagnose and recommend treatment.
The advance has sparked new hope that someday doctors may be able to
test a host of cancer-killing drugs on a person’s own tumour cells in
the lab, before returning to the patient with a therapy that is likely
to be a good match.
“This would really be the ultimate in personalised medicine,” said
lead author Richard Schlegel, chairman of the department of pathology at
Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.
“The therapies would be exactly from their tissues. We would get
normal tissue and tumour tissue from a particular patient and
specifically match up their therapies,” Schlegel said.
“We are really excited about the possibilities of testing what we can do with this.”
The method, described in the online edition of the American Journal
of Pathology, borrows on a simple method used in stem cell research,
experts said.
Lung, breast, prostate and colon cancers were kept alive for up to
two years using the technique, which combines fibroblast feeder cells to
keep cells alive and a Rho kinase (ROCK) inhibitor that allows them to
reproduce.
When treated with the duo, both cancer and normal cells reverted to a
“stem-like state,” Schlegel said, allowing researchers to compare the
living cells directly for the first time.
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