Could ‘reprogramming’ bowel cancer cells make chemotherapy more effective?
Cancer types:
Bowel cancer
Project period:
–
Research institute:
University of Udine
Award amount:
£101,000
Location:
Italy
Dr Di Giorgio and his team in Italy are developing a potential new type of cancer treatment that could reprogramme genetic changes in bowel cancer cells, making them more sensitive to chemotherapy. Making chemotherapy more effective like this will lead to better survival rates for patients, and fewer lives being cut short.
Why is this research needed?
Bowel cancer is the third most common type of cancer worldwide. Chemotherapy drugs are commonly used to treat bowel cancer and they can be very effective. But some types of bowel cancer - especially bowel cancer that has spread - can develop resistance to chemotherapy. Once resistance develops, then treatment options can unfortunately become more limited for patients.
Dr Di Giorgio and his team have found important molecular and genetic changes in bowel cancer cells that are resistant to a type of chemotherapy. They have also found a new type of treatment that appears to target these changes and help to reset the cancer cells, making them more vulnerable to the chemotherapy drug again. During this project, the team will investigate in more detail exactly how this new treatment could work, and which patients with bowel cancer would benefit most.
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What is the science behind this project?
Cancer cells treated with chemotherapy drugs can sometimes undergo extensive molecular remodelling that can help them become resistant to chemotherapy. They can also develop sweeping changes to whole patterns of genes that are switched on and off inside the cell- these are called ‘epigenetic changes’.
Dr Di Giorgio has found that some bowel cancer cells treated with a chemotherapy called oxaliplatin can develop very specific epigenetic changes. His revolutionary idea involves using a treatment that appears to be able to ‘reset’ some of these changes, making cancer cells sensitive to oxaliplatin again.
But this new treatment will likely only work for certain types of bowel cancer, and we don’t yet know which patients could benefit. To find out, the researchers need to do tests in cancer cell samples taken from a wide group of patients. First, they will grow small clusters of bowel cancer cells in the lab. These are called organoids, and they act like miniature versions of a tumour. Then, the team will treat each organoid with the new treatment and with oxaliplatin.
What difference could this project make to patients in the future?
By analysing how the cancer cells respond to this treatment, the team hope to pick up specific molecular and epigenetic ‘signatures’ that could predict which types of cancer are most likely to be sensitive to this type of treatment. They hope this will help them to develop a simple test that doctors could use to predict whether a patient is likely to benefit.
Fitting the right treatment to the right patient like this is called ‘personalised medicine’, and Dr Di Giorgio hopes that his work could lead to a whole new personalised treatment approach for patients with bowel cancer.
The longer that chemotherapy keeps working for a patient, then the more effective that treatment is likely to be. This new treatment has real potential to help anyone who is at risk of developing resistance to oxaliplatin, and bring hope to patients with limited treatment options.
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