Brian Crompton with Stephanie Meyer (left) and Kellsey Wuerthele (PHOTO: JOHN DEPUTY)
Our blood carries tiny amounts of DNA from broken-up cells. If we have cancer, some of that DNA comes from tumor cells. Studies performed with adult cancers have shown that this circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) may offer crucial clues about tumor genetic mutations and how tumors respond to treatment.
Brian Crompton, MD, with colleagues at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center and elsewhere, is now working to bring ctDNA “liquid biopsies” to pediatric solid tumors as well. The researchers hope that these blood tests will eventually improve early detection, choice of treatment and monitoring of young patients with these diseases without having to sample the tumor itself. …
Epigenetic enzymes and lung cancer: Treating adenocarcinoma with G9a histone methyltransferase inhibitors leads to an increase in tumor cells with stem-like properties. In contrast, inhibiting histone demethylase prevents tumor growth. (SAMUEL ROWBOTHAM/BOSTON CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL)
Epigenetic therapies — targeting enzymes that alter what genes are turned on or off in a cell — are of growing interest in oncology as a way to make cancers less aggressive or less malignant. But now, at least one epigenetic therapy that had looked promising for lung cancer appears to boost the cancer stem cells that are believed to drive tumors. A study published today in Nature Communications also identifies a strategy that reduces these stem cells, curbing lung cancer in mice. …
Reducing cancer proliferation: A small molecule that inactivates NUAK2, part of the Hippo/YAP pathway, reduces the number of cancerous cells in the mouse liver. (WEI-CHIEN YUAN/BOSTON CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL)
It’s known that cancer involves unchecked cell growth and that a pathway that regulates the size of organs, known as Hippo, is also involved in cancer. It’s further known that a major player in this pathway, YAP, drives many types of tumors. What’s been lacking is how to turn this knowledge into a practical cancer treatment. In a study published today in Nature Communications, researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital identify a target downstream of YAP, called NUAK2, and show that it can readily be inactivated with a small molecule.
“The Hippo pathway, and especially YAP, has been hard to target with drugs,” says senior study author Fernando Camargo, PhD, of Boston Children’s Stem Cell Research program. “This is the first demonstration of a ‘druggable’ molecule that could be targeted in any type of tumor driven by YAP.” …
Leonard Zon and Julien Ablain are finding that zebrafish can tell us a lot about cancer. (PHOTO: SHANE HURLEY/BOSTON CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL)
Zebrafish are an emerging power tool in cancer research. They can be engineered to light up when certain genes turn on — capturing the moment when a cancer is initiated. Because they breed so quickly, they lend themselves to rapid, large-scale chemical screening studies, so can help identify tumor promoters and suppressors. Now, as a new study in Science demonstrates, zebrafish can also help scientists dissect the intricate molecular pathways that underlie many cancers, and could help guide treatment strategies — in this case, for mucosal melanoma. …
A new study suggests the power of zebrafish as tools for cancer drug discovery (PHOTO: KATHERINE C. COHEN)
The lab of Leonard Zon, MD, has long been interested in making blood stem cells in quantity for therapeutic purposes. To test for their presence in zebrafish, their go-to research model, they turned to the MYB gene, a marker of blood stem cells. To spot the cells, Joseph Mandelbaum, a PhD candidate in the lab, attached a fluorescent green tag to MYB that made it easily visible in transparent zebrafish embryos.
“It was a real workhorse line for us,” says Zon, who directs the Stem Cell Research Program at Boston Children’s Hospital.
In addition to being a marker of blood stem cells, MYB is an oncogene. About five years ago, Zon was having lunch at a cancer meeting and, serendipitously, sat next to Jeff Kaufman, who was also interested in MYB. Kaufman was excited to hear about Zon’s fluorescing MYB zebrafish, which can be studied at scale and are surprisingly similar to humans genetically.
“Have you ever heard of adenoid cystic carcinoma?” he asked Zon. …
Researchers have packaged a tumor suppressor into a therapeutic nanoparticle. IMAGE: ISLAM, ET AL.
Most of the time, cancer cells do a combination of two things: they overexpress genes that drive tumor growth and they lose normal genes that typically suppress tumors. No two tumors are exactly alike, but some combination of these two effects is usually what results in cancer. Now, for the first time, researchers have shown that it’s possible to treat cancer by delivering a gene that naturally suppresses tumors.
Researchers from Boston Children’s Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center combined their cancer biology and nanomaterials expertise and developed a therapeutic capable of delivering a tumor suppressor gene known as PTEN, the loss of which can allow tumors to grow unchecked.
In several preclinical models, their PTEN–boosting therapeutic was able to inhibit tumor growth. Their findings were published yesterday in Nature Biomedical Engineering. …
Medulloblastoma (CREDIT: ARMED FORCES INSTITUTE OF PATHOLOGY/WIKIMEDIA)
Medulloblastoma is one of the most common pediatric brain tumors, accounting for nearly 10 percent of cases. It occurs in the cerebellum, a complex part of the brain that controls balance, coordination and motor function and regulates verbal expression and emotional modulation. While overall survival rates are high, current therapies can be toxic and cause secondary cancers. Developing alternative therapeutics is a priority for the field.
The World Health Organization updated the brain tumor classification scheme in 2016 to include these molecular and genetic features. In the new scheme, tumor subtypes with a good molecular prognosis receive less radiation and chemotherapy. But the creation of targeted therapeutics has remained a challenge, since some of the genetic pathways implicated in these subtypes are found in non-cancerous cells. …
A microscopic view of human testis tissue. Researchers have discovered why males are more likely to get bladder cancer than females. IMAGE: ADOBE STOCK
New research helps explain why men are three to five times more likely to develop bladder cancer than women.
Using mouse models and human patient data, Boston Children’s Hospital researchers in the urology department, Xue Sean Li, PhD, and Satoshi Kaneko, PhD, found that inherent genomic differences contribute to the contrast in bladder cancer rate between males and females. …
The hope to improve people’s lives is what drives many members of industry and academia to bring new products and therapies to market. At the BIO International Convention last week in Boston, there was lots of discussion about how translational science intersects with patients’ needs and why the best therapeutic developmental pipelines are consistently putting patients first.
“Our mission is to de-risk entry of new therapies in the ASD drug discovery and development space,” said Sahin, who is also a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.
One big challenge, says Sahin, is knowing how well — or how poorly — autism therapies are actually affecting people with ASD. Externally, ASD is recognized by its core symptoms of repetitive behaviors and social deficits. …
Scientists have discovered that DIPG/DMG tumors are made up of H3K27M-mutated cell populations that contain many cells stuck in a stem-cell-like state, fueling tumor growth. Cells that can differentiate despite the H3K27M mutation could hold the key to unlocking a new therapy for DIPG/DMG.
For more than 15 years, pediatric neuro-oncologist Mariella Filbin, MD, PhD, has been on a scientific crusade to understand DIPG (diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma). She hopes to one day be able to cure a disease that has historically been thought of as an incurable type of childhood brain cancer.
“While I was in medical school, I met a young girl who was diagnosed with DIPG,” Filbin recalls. “When I heard that there was no treatment available, I couldn’t believe that was the case. It really made a huge impression on me and since then, I’ve dedicated all my research to fighting DIPG.”
Her mission brought her to Boston Children’s Hospital for her medical residency program and later, to do postdoctoral research at the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center. Now, she’s starting her own research laboratory focused on DIPG — which has also been called diffuse midline glioma (DMG) in recent years — and continuing to treat children with brain tumors at the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s pediatric brain tumor treatment center. She’s also a scientist affiliated with the Broad Institute Cancer Program.
This year, Filbin has made new impact in the field by leveraging the newest single-cell genetic sequencing technologies to analyze exactly how DIPG develops in the first place. Her latest research, published in Science, entailed profiling more than 3,300 individual brain cells from biopsies of six different patients.
Using what’s known as a single-cell RNA sequencing approach to interrogate the makeup of DIPG/DMG tumors, Filbin was able to identify a particularly problematic type of brain cell that acts forever young, constantly dividing over and over again in a manner similar to stem cells. …
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