Leukemia Causing Stem Cells Can be Identified

Leukemia Causing Stem Cells Can be Identified

Researchers at several US institutions have collaborated on work distinguishing leukemia-causing stem cells from normal stem cells. The news is reported on the website for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; the study will be published in Nature. It has been reasonably well-established that cancer stem cells exist for several different forms of cancer; these stem cells proliferate at a different rate from the cancer cells themselves, and thus are often not targeted by drugs. Killing them might lead to killing normal stem cells. Previous research had shown that the gene Pten acted significantly differently in normal stem cells than in cancer-causing stem cells; when the gene is inactivated, normal cells stop growing but cancer cells grow rapidly.

In the study being reported on now, the researchers used the existing anti-cancer drug rapamycin to target the Pten pathway, leading the drug to kill the cancer stem cells without harming the normal stem cells. The experiment was done on mice, but since rapamycin is already an FDA approved cancer drug, researchers believe that it should be possible to begin clinical trials on humans relatively soon. Rapamycin also helps restore normal stem cells and increased the animals’ ability to make immune system cells after damage to the bone marrow.