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Anthrax’s Deadly Aim on Cancer

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Scientists are working on a way to harness the destructive power of anthrax to fight cancer.

Through mouse studies scientists found that several different types of tumors dramatically shrank after being injected with an altered form of the anthrax toxin.

What works in mice does not always work in people, so it is too soon to say whether anthrax will ever be tested in people, according to Dr. Stephen H. Leppa, who led the research along with Dr. Thomas H. Bugge.

However in an interview with Reuters Health, Leppla, who is at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research in Bethesda, Maryland, called the research a ‘new strategy’ for fighting cancer.

The enzyme that the researchers focused on is called urokinase plasminogen activator, which Leppla said is ‘a very specific marker for tumor cells.’ Virtually all tumor cells have this enzyme on their surface, he said, but it rarely appears in normal cells.

Previously Leppla and his colleagues had found that the anthrax toxin only becomes activated when the cell it is targeting carries an enzyme called furin on its surface. The anthrax toxin is able to start devastating cells after it has been activated by its contact with furin.

Researchers have now report that they have discovered a way to use the anthrax toxin to target tumors, rather than healthy cells. The results of the research are being published in the advance online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


Leppla and Bugge’s team adjusted the anthrax toxin to ensure it was triggered by urokinase plasminogen activator, the enzyme found almost exclusively on tumor cells, and not by furin. Several different types of human tumors that had been transplanted into mice, rapidly diminished after being injected with the modified toxin.

Although it altered the form of anthrax ravaged tumor cells, it left normal cells alone.

The results so far are encouraging, Leppla said, but there is a long way to go. Scientists still have to determine the best way to administer the modified anthrax toxin as well as the most appropriate dose in animals. Leppla said a company has licensed the technology, but it is too soon to say whether any anthrax-based therapies will make it to human clinical trials.

(Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences & Reuters Health)


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Dates

Posted On: 14 January, 2003
Modified On: 3 December, 2013

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