Back to the Archives—Stem Cells and Tumors

Back to the Archives—Stem Cells and Tumors

A year ago is old news in science these days, but sometimes even if it’s not “news,” it’s still interesting. An example of this is an AP article published nearly a year ago on Wired News about using stem cells to treat cancerous tumors in mice. A longer report on the study can also be found on Medical News Today.

In the research, which appeared in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, scientists used a stem cell to encode the interferon beta gene. Interferon beta therapy can kill cancer cells but is highly toxic to the patient. When the stem cells were engineered to carry the interferon beta gene, they targeted the tumors directly and produced therapeutic proteins.

The stem cells in this case were mesenchymal stem cells, which are produced in the bone marrow and already work at healing wounds and forming scar tissue. Since tumors are made up in part of stomal cells, which are cells around a body opening, the stem cells “see” them as a wound and go directly there. In the study, mice treated with interferon beta stem cells lived 60 days, compared to 37 days for untreated mice and 41 days for mice treated with injections of interferon beta. No stem cells went to healthy organs.

At the time this study was published, the lead author, Michael Andreeff of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston was hoping to get FDA approval for human clinical trials within a year. I was not able to find any more information on the current status of this, but there are 4 clinical trials currently recruiting for treatment with MSCs for other conditions. They can be found at Clinicaltrials.gov, a service of the NIH.