Stem cells boost brain tumor treatments for some patients, study finds

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(CBS News) Patients with brain cancer may face devastating side effects from chemotherapy, but a new study offers a possible solution: stem cells.

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The stem cells form a shield of sorts against the toxic side effects from chemo, according to the researchers behind the study. It was a small trial that involved only three patients with glioblastoma, the most aggressive and common form of a malignant brain tumor that's usually fatal.

Two of the patients survived longer than predicted with help from the stem cell treatment - an average of 22 months - and a third man from Alaska remains alive today with no disease progression almost three years following treatment.

How does it work?

Many patients with the deadly form of brain cancer possess a gene called MGMT. The MGMT gene is typically turned on and counters the effects from some chemotherapy agents, such as temozolomide, rendering them less effective. As such, people with such a gene often have a particularly poor prognosis.

A drug called benzylguanine can block the MGMT gene, thus making tumors more receptive to chemotherapy, but the combination of the drug and chemo are often too toxic for healthy bone marrow cells.

That's where the new stem cell treatment comes in. By combining bone marrow stem cells with a modified version of MGMT in the form of  the new treatment, patients' cells were protected from the toxic effects of the cancer drugs and chemotherapy while keeping the tumor cells targeted.

"This therapy is analogous to firing at both tumor cells and bone marrow cells, but giving the bone marrow cells protective shields while the tumor cells are unshielded," study author Dr. Jennifer Adair, a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, said in a news release.

The new therapy is described in the May 9 issue of Science Translational Medicine.

"This is a very interesting study and a completely new approach to protecting normal cells during cancer treatment. It needs to be tested in more patients but it may mean that we can use temozolomide [a chemotherapy drug] for more brain tumor patients than we previously thought," Professor Susan Short, a scientist at the nonprofit Cancer Research UK who was not involved in the research, told BBC News.

Nearly 23,000 people are diagnosed with a brain tumor each year and another 13,700 die, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The National Institutes of Health has more on brain tumors.

[SergioStagnaro]

I find the paper really intriguing and fascinating. However, we must pay attention to following overlooked remarks, I emphasised formerly,for instance, April 12, 2007 at URL http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wpdyn/comments/display?contentID=AR2007041101736&start=41 and June 12, 2011, http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/06/researchers_rebut_critiques_of.html#comments
In my opinion, a great lot of money on studying stem cells, accounts for the reason there is an overlooked bias in such as research articles! In fact, in performing stem cell researches all around the world scientists continue to overlook both an inherited mithocondrial cytopathy, I termed Congenital Acidosic Enzyme-Metabolic Histangiopathy and Biophysical-Semeiotic Constitutions (1-6). Accordingly,e.g., type 2 diabetes mellitus is a major problem worldwide, a real epidemic. Independent of different countries, in last decades type 2 DM prevalence has increased rapidly over time among both developed and developing populations: in 2030, diabetics will be 360 millions. Surely, genetic factors alone cannot explain these patterns. However, as allows me to state my clinical 55-year-long clinical experience, individuals, without diabetic AND dyslipidemic quantum-biophysical-semeiotic constitutions, can not be involved by type 2 diabets mellitus (1-6). Certainly, rapid changes in lifestyle and risk factors such as obesity, unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, tobacco smoking, a.s.o., acting on people with diabetic and dyslipidaemic constitution may prompt, AT FIRST, Pre-Metabolic Syndrome, then, over years or decades, metabolic syndrome (2, 6), IGT, and finally type 2 diabetes. In a few words, all around the world, e.g., the war against diabetes mellitus and its well-known and harmful so-called complications, as well as the war against all other serious and common human diseases, as cancer and CAD, is nowadays possible, also utilizing possibly stem cells of whatever origin, exclusively by means of a primary prevention, which must be perform at the bed-side, clinically, on a very large scale, using the simple stethoscope. In addition, we must in the future utilize stem cell, of whatever origin, of individuals not involved by above-cited quantum-biophysical-semeiotic constitutions! In other words, in both primary prevention and screening programme for every disease, including type 2 DM, and cancer, we need efficacious clinical tools to obtain the best results, avoiding, e.g., to use stem cell with heritable impaired mitochondria. Really, early diagnosis must certainly be established in asymptomatic patients, who, for example, are evolving slowly towards diabetes mellitus, i.e. long time before disease onset, in order to avoid the well known, severe complications. In fact, to prevent these diabetic "complications", including diabetic retinopathy, on very large scale it is extremely necessary that doctors use a clinical tool reliable in diagnosing early diabetes mellitus stages, from initial stages, i.e., biophysical-semeiotic constitutions, and then the Pre-Metabolic Syndrome, useful particularly in selecting appropriate stem cells to be utilized. As I wrote formerly in PLOS (7), physicians can fortunately utilize bedside clinical methods reliable in ascertain the truth of articles published in famous peer reviews.

References
1 Stagnaro S., Stagnaro-Neri M. Valutazione percusso-ascoltatoria del Diabete Mellito. Aspetti teorici e pratici. Epat. 32, 131 1986

2 Stagnaro Sergio, Stagnaro-Neri Marina. Introduzione alla Semeiotica Biofisica. Il Terreno oncologico. Travel Factory SRL., Roma, 2004

3 Stagnaro S., Stagnaro-Neri M., Le Costituzioni Semeiotico-Biofisiche.Strumento clinico fondamentale per la prevenzione primaria e la definizione della Single Patient Based Medicine. Ediz. Travel Factory, Roma, 2004.

4 Stagnaro S., Istangiopatia Congenita Acidosica Enzimo-Metabolica. Una Patologia Mitocondriale Ignorata. Gazz Med. It. - Arch. Sci. Med. 144, 423,1985 Infotrieve.

5 Stagnaro S. Diet and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes. N Engl J Med. 2002 Jan 243464:297-298. [MEDLINE].

6 Stagnaro S.-Neri M..Stagnaro S., Sindrome di Reaven, classica e variante, in evoluzione diabetica. Il ruolo della Carnitina nella prevenzione del diabetemellito. Il Cuore. 6, 617, 1993, [MEDLINE].

7)Stagnaro Sergio. Single Patient Based Medicine: its paramount role in Future Medicine. Public Library of Science. http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=read-response