CANCER patients could one day be able to learn in “real time” if their chemotherapy has worked.
Scientists are honing a technique that can assess the effectiveness of the cancer treatment in as little as eight hours after administration.
Conventional methods of testing effectiveness, such as scans, usually cannot detect whether a tumour is shrinking until a patient has received multiple cycles of therapy.
But experts from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, have developed an approach that can alert them to the death of cancer cells the moment the drugs begin to work.
Using a nanoparticle that delivers cancer therapy and then glows green when cancer cells die, researchers were able to see whether a tumour was resistant or susceptible to chemotherapy or immunotherapy.
The finding, published in The Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences, could one day mean patients are not given more chemotherapy that does not respond to their cancer.
“Using this approach, the cells light up the moment a cancer drug starts working,” said Dr Shiladitya Sengupta, a principal investigator in Brigham and Women’s Hospital Division of Bioengineering. “We can determine if a cancer therapy is effective within hours of treatment.
“Our long-term goal is to find a way to monitor outcomes very early so that we don’t give a chemotherapy drug to patients who are not responding to it.”
The technique takes advantage of the fact that when cells die, an enzyme known as caspase is activated. The researchers developed a “reporter element” that glows green when in the presence of this enzyme.
They then tested whether they could use “reporter nanoparticles” to distinguish whether tumours were sensitive to treatment in lab tests.
Using nanoparticles loaded with anti-cancer drugs, the team tested a chemotherapy called paclitaxel in a pre-clinical model of prostate cancer, and an immunotherapy in a pre-clinical model of melanoma.
In the tumours that were sensitive to paclitaxel, there was a 400 per cent increase in fluorescence compared to tumours that were not sensitive to the drug.
The team also saw a significant increase in the fluorescent signal in tumours treated with the immunotherapy after five days.
The researchers now plan to see whether the findings can be tested in humans.
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here