Glioblastoma is very difficult to treat because it quickly adapts and evolves to become resistant to existing treatments indicated for brain cancers. Now, scientists have found a protein on this cancer’s cells that could be targeted in order to make the cancer more vulnerable to the treatments administered to combat this deadly malignancy.
The discovery was made by researchers based at the Comprehensive Cancer Center at Ohio State University. The findings of this preclinical study appeared in the journal Cancer Letters.
The team wanted to find a way to make existing treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy more effective against this deadly cancer, rather than trying to find ways to replace those existing treatments. They studied several proteins on glioblastoma (GBM) cells and identified one, dubbed SET, as a target whose suppression could make the cancer vulnerable to existing treatments.
In animal models, the suppression of SET resulted in suppressed tumor growth, a finding that could reshape how brain cancer is treated. The team found that when they blocked other proteins related to SET, GBM cells became more sensitive to radiation.
While these preliminary findings offer plenty of hope, a lot more work needs to be done before treatments targeting the cancer proteins responsible for GBM developing resistance to treatment can be used in humans.
The researchers are looking into boosting the activity of an enzyme called PP2A, which controls the signals that regulate cancer cell survival, growth and repair after exposure to cancer treatment. GBM leverages three proteins: SET, CIP2A and ANP32A to suppress PP2A activity. By so doing, the cancer is able to become resistant to any existing treatment that it is exposed to.
The scientists are therefore focused on finding ways to restore PP2A activity since their tests show that doing so makes the cancer less capable of surviving the treatments it is exposed to.
When the team assessed an existing drug approved by the FDA for treating people with psychosis, they found that this drug works by influencing the PP2A pathway. This provided the researchers with additional motivation to plan further work aimed at studying what impact blocking not just SET but also CIP2A and ANP32A proteins could have on cancer activity.
They found that the beneficial effects were even greater since most cancer cells died upon exposure to chemotherapy and radiation. This opens the door to combating GBM by developing treatments that restore PP2A activity in patients.
It remains to be seen how future brain cancer drugs developed by enterprises like CNS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CNSP) could be boosted by combining them with therapies aimed at supporting PP2A functioning.
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