There might be a way to test whether or not a patient with Ewing sarcoma can be treated using current standard therapies.
There might be a way to test whether or not a patient with Ewing sarcoma can be treated using current standard therapies.
New research has shown that one in three patients diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma does not respond well to existing treatment methods. Knowing which ones they are before commencing or continuing any therapy will allow healthcare professionals to offer additional treatment modes, as needed, thereby increasing their chances of survival.
The study, conducted by University of Leeds scientists and funded by the Bone Cancer Research Trust and Ewing’s Sarcoma Research Trust, identified cancer stem-like cells that are chemotherapy-resistant and likely cause disease recurrence. Laboratory tests reportedly showed that the protein neurexin-1 was at high levels in resistant cancers, making them more likely to see a return and less likely to survive.
“The initial clinical impact from this research is the ability to identify those patients with localized disease who experience the poor outcomes normally associated with patients who have disease in multiple parts of the body. If doctors can use high levels of neurexin-1 to identify these patients at an early stage and treat them with a stronger combination of drugs, this could increase survival for some patients,” said Sue Burchill, the lead researcher and a professor from the University of Leeds School of Medicine.
Patients with Ewing sarcoma previously had a 55 to 65 percent survival rate when given interventions such as radiotherapy, surgery, and chemotherapy. The others had no choice but to wait things out as cancer spreads.
For this study, Burchill’s team worked with surgeons from the Royal Orthopedic Hospital in Birmingham and the Translational and Clinical Research Institute at the University of Newcastle. They used sample tumor tissues from patients with the disease and observed the cells in a laboratory environment. The scientist took around 1,000 single cells for each sample to determine which ones were resistant to current treatments.
“Tumors are a mix of different cells which interact with each other and with cells of the surrounding environment to grow and spread. However, cancer stem-like cells are different: they can divide and multiply independently of other cells in the tumor and can initiate new tumor spread and growth. These are the particularly dangerous cells we wanted to find,” noted Dr. Elizabeth Roundhill, a research fellow at the University of Leeds.
Further details of the study can be found in the journal Cellular Oncology where it is published.
