Danish scientists who were working on ways to fight malaria in pregnant women have accidentally discovered that the malaria protein they were using in their vaccine, when armed with a toxin, could kill cancer cells. The test was conducted on mice, and showed that the malaria protein first attached itself to the carbohydrate of the cancer cell, which later was killed off by the toxin. They hope to be able to begin tests on humans in the next four years.
For decades, scientists have been searching for similarities between the growth of a placenta and a tumor,” Ali Salanti from University of Copenhagen, was quoted as saying on the university’s website. “The placenta is an organ, which within a few months grows from only few cells into an organ weighing approx. two pounds, and it provides the embryo with oxygen and nourishment in a relatively foreign environment. In a manner of speaking, tumors do much the same, they grow aggressively in a relatively foreign environment.”
“The biggest questions are whether it’ll work in the human body, and if the human body can tolerate the doses needed without developing side effects,” said Salanti. He added: “But we’re optimistic because the protein appears to only attach itself to a carbohydrate that is only found in the placenta and in cancer tumors in humans.”
“We examined the carbohydrate’s function. In the placenta, it helps ensure fast growth,” Salanti said in the release. “Our experiments showed that it was the same in cancer tumors. We combined the malaria parasite with cancer cells, and the parasite reacted to the cancer cells as if they were a placenta and attached itself.” To test the power of the toxin with the malaria parasite against cancer, researchers analyzed thousands of samples including brain tumors and leukemias, and observed that the combination could target more than 90 percent of all types of tumors.
“We have separated the malaria protein, which attaches itself to the carbohydrate and then added a toxin,” said Mads Daugaard, a cancer researcher at Canada’s University of British Columbia and one of the scientists who worked on the research. “By conducting tests on mice, we have been able to show that the combination of protein and toxin kill the cancer cells.” They evaluated the drug in mice that were implanted with three types of human tumors, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, prostate cancer and metastatic bone cancer. The treated mice with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma saw their tumors reduced to about one-fourth the size of the tumors in the control group. In the treated mice with prostate cancer, tumors in two of the six rodents disappeared. And five out of the six treated mice that had metastatic bone cancer stayed alive, compared to none of the mice in the control group.
“It appears that the malaria protein attaches itself to the tumor without any significant attachment to other tissue,” Thomas Mandel Clausen, a Ph.D. student at the University of Copenhagen, who has been part of the research for the past two years, said in the release. “And the mice that were given doses of protein and toxin showed far higher survival rates than the untreated mice. We have seen that three doses can arrest growth in a tumor and even make it shrink.” Salanti said in the researchers’ forthcoming test in humans, they will analyze drug function and dosing as well as any potential side effects. “We’re optimistic because the protein appears to only attach itself to a carbohydrate that is only found in the placenta and in cancer tumors in humans,” he said in the release
It will be at least four years before the treatment will be available for human testing, and researchers are hopeful it’ll be a significant step forward in cancer treatment research. However, since the protein they use attaches to carbohydrates found only in the placenta and cancer tumors, this life-saving characteristic will make the treatment too dangerous for cancer treatment in pregnant women. “Expressed in popular terms, the toxin will believe that the placenta is a tumor and kill it, in exactly the same way it will believe that a tumor is a placenta,” Salanti said.
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