Researchers at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart medical school in Italy and Johns Hopkins Medicine in Boston have found new evidence suggesting that a prospective copper therapy can be used to help save children suffering from medulloblastoma.
Medulloblastoma is a rapidly growing central nervous system cancer that originates in the spinal cord or brain. This cancer is the most common pediatric brain malignancy and mainly seen in children aged 10 and below. Figures show that about 500 cases of this particular cancer are diagnosed yearly.
The rate of survival for children suffering from medulloblastoma when the disease hasn’t metastasized is 70%. However, this can drop to 40% depending on several factors, including if the cancer has spread to other parts of the body, the extent of any surgical removal of prior tumors, the tumor’s molecular subtype and the age of the patient. It should be noted that there are four molecular subtypes of tumors for this particular cancer.
Traditional treatments for pediatric medulloblastoma include radiation and chemotherapy as well as surgery, which are either used individually or in combination. This study examined the use of an alternative therapy that combines copper ions with Disulfiram [DSF], which is a drug typically used to treat chronic alcoholism.
Associate professor Betty Tyler of Johns Hopkins, the senior author of the study, stated that Disulfiram had shown great potential being reused as an anticancer agent, particularly when it was combined with metal ions such as copper (Cu++). Tyler further explained that their objective was to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of the DSF-Cu++ combination against two subtypes of pediatric medulloblastoma, as the combination hadn’t been evaluated for possible pediatric use before.
For their study, the researchers tested DSF-Cu++ anticancer activity and tried to define what it targeted at the molecular level, both in mice and cell cultures. They discovered that DSF-Cu++ blocked a pair of biological pathways which cancer cells needed in order to eliminate proteins that threatened their survival in medulloblastomas.
Henry Brem, coauthor of the study, explained that blocking these pathways allowed these proteins to accumulate in the tumors, which caused the malignant cells to die. The researchers also discovered that in addition to killing medulloblastoma cells, DSF-Cu++ cut down the cells that created them.
In addition, they found that DSF-Cu++ impaired medulloblastoma cells’ ability to repair damage done to their DNA, which enhanced the cytotoxic power of the therapy. The study’s findings were published in the “PLOS ONE” journal.
Plenty of research is being done by companies such as CNS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CNSP) with an aim of coming up with better remedies that can give patients and their caregivers superior clinical outcomes.
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