Neural Stem Cells and cancer
Scientists Use Neural Stem Cells To Treat Triple Negative Breast Cancer
Breast cancer has caused lots of fear in women throughout the world. It is one of the most common cancers that are sending our ladies back into their early graves earlier than they ought to. This is a type of cancer that has continued to depopulate the world and rob us of our mothers and sisters leaving behind orphans and widowers. There is another type of breast cancer that is not known to many but it is the most dangerous than the breast cancer many people are aware of. This breast cancer is known as Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). Triple negative breast cancer is the most difficult cancer to treat as these cancer cells are very resistant to drugs. These cancer cells do not have the characteristic receptors for estrogen, progesterone and Her2/neu that are normally targeted by most cancer treatment alternatives. Even the conventional cancer treatments like chemotherapy only serve to make the cancer cells more and more resistant. This makes it very hard to treat a patient with Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) as most treatments especially the conventional cancer treatments target these receptors that are missing in the cells. Without these receptors such treatments do not work completely and this only result in making the situation worse as chemotherapy will only lead to increased levels of free radicals in the body of the patient. The treatments must target receptors to work well. For instance Tamoxifen targets estrogen receptors, in absence of estrogen receptors Tamoxifen cannot work in cancer treatment. For this reason, TNBC is considered the most aggressive, the most likely to be treated with less-targeted (and therefore more toxic) forms of chemotherapy, and the soonest to return when treatment fails. This therefore means that other alternatives must be used to ensure that the Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is treated so that ladies are not condemned to death when they are diagnosed with this disease.
Effective in treatment of TNBC
Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) has put doctors on endless pursuit of its cure. However most of the doctors have proposed the use natural herbs, vegetables and fruits as they are rich in anti-cancer properties that can help to fight Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) more effectively. One of the treatments methods that researchers have proposed is the use of neural stem cells.
Karen Aboody, M.D built a platform at city of hope that is now being used by Mooney, Ph.D. who is a postdoctoral CIRM Scholar and a colleague in Aboody’s laboratory to find out how these stem cells can be used to ferry chemotherapy drugs into the breast cells to curb metastasis of the breast cancer. The platform that these doctors are using involves the use of neural stem cells that naturally reach the cancer tumors in the body. In fact cancer stem cells play a vital role in cancer, metastasis. Their approach to killing the cancer cells involves modifying these neural stem cells to secrete an enzyme that activates a benign substance that powerfully works as a cancer killing agent in the tumors.
The use of neural stem cells in fighting the cancerous cells is good ideas as the stem cells will obvious make even the most resistant breast cancer cells to be destroyed. In this pursuit for better cancer treatment by use of the neural stem cells Dr. Mooney is working together withJacob Berlin, PhD to make this platform a cancer targeting delivery systems for nanoparticles which are essentially plastic containers that are ten thousands times smaller than the width of a single human hair. The doctors are using these plastic transporters to ferry the chemo drugs by filling them with the chemotherapy drugs and having them attached to the neural stem cells that thereafter transports them to the tumor sites. This treatment is very effective since the neural stem cells even pass through the blood -brain barrier reaching even tumors that might have spread to the brain. As the neural stem cells reach the tumor they release the chemotherapy drugs that are packed in the plastic vessels which kill the tumors.
The research on the use of the neural stem cells in fighting cancer has been promising so much that Mooney was awarded two-year postdoctoral cancer research fellowship awarded by the Ladies Auxiliary to the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States to focus specifically on breast cancer metastases. This shows that this treatment is effective and may soon be the best option recommendable to breast cancer patients.
“Cancer cells are very dynamic and elusive, mutating so quickly our current drugs cannot find or fight them, by using a living cell to deliver drugs, it can respond to environmental signals in the body – like inflammation – to track the tumors.” said Mooney. She earned her doctorate from the University of Colorado at Boulder and is studying business at Keck Graduate Institute.
The builder of this platform; Aboody has shown that the neural stem cell are very effective in treatment of some types of brain cancer such as glioma which is characterized by rapid growth and metastasis. This discovery is yet to make the treatment of Triple negative breast cancer more effective.
Dr. Dalal Akoury (MD) is an experienced integrative cancer doctor that has helped many cancer patients in their fight against the disease. She has worked hard not only in treating the disease but also in availing informational support to cancer patients at Awaremed which has become a place called home for many cancer patients. Call on her now and get help on cancer.
Scientists Use Neural Stem Cells To Treat Triple Negative Breast Cancer
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