A study published online in the journal Clinical Cancer Research has revealed that researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed a method to cure synovial sarcoma. The cancer is a rare one, attacking soft tissues like ligaments and muscles.
The cure was developed using an investigational drug, which brings about cell death. The drug was developed by the researchers at the Washington University who are gearing up for a Phase 1 clinical trial to study its safety and efficiency in patients suffering from synovial sarcoma, which has spread all over the body.
Synovial sarcoma is a rare cancer, with 900 to 1,000 new cases being diagnosed annually, and is usually diagnosed during adolescence and into young and middle adulthood.
Oncologist Brian A Van Tine, MD, PhD, a professor of medicine, said of the disease, "Synovial sarcoma is responsible for about 10 percent of all sarcomas, and because sarcoma in general is rare, a lot of these patients, paediatric and adult, travel from all over the country to receive treatment at our specialized Sarcoma Center. If it's diagnosed early, this cancer can be cured with standard care like surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. But once it spreads, we have no effective curative therapies, so we're looking for new treatment strategies that take advantage of the genetic quirks of this rare tumor."
Washington University researchers found that synovial sarcoma does not have an important protein, which most tumors depend on to drive their energy metabolism. The absence of this important protein known as malic enzyme 1 or ME1 makes synovial sarcoma tumors to rely on a different metabolic pathway, which makes it very vulnerable to the inhibition of that alternate pathway. The investigational drug ACXT-3102 messes up this alternate route. The interference causes volatile waste compounds known as reactive oxygen species to build up inside the cancer cells. When sufficient reactive oxygen species build up inside the cell, it dies.
Researchers said, "Because they're missing ME1, these tumor cells are already crippled in their ability to fight damage from reactive oxygen species. So, we asked if we could use this broken defense against this cancer. When levels of these compounds skyrocket inside the cells, they die very quickly."
The experimental drug ACXT-3102 was developed by William G Hawkins, MD, the Neidorff Family and Robert C Packman, Professor of Surgery and his team, to treat pancreatic cancer. Because most pancreatic cancers still have ME1, researchers need to find a second way to attack that tumor type. However, because the metabolism of synovial sarcoma is unusual and consistent across patients, the cancer's defining genetic mistake is present in 90-95 percent of all cases. Hence, the researchers are sure that this rare tumor could be treatable with this experimental drug alone.
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