Hedgehog blocker thwarts cancer stem cells
Nature
2009년1월26일
Drugs that block the hedgehog signalling pathway may prove useful in treating chronic myelogenous leukaemia (CML), a study in Nature suggests.
The hedgehog signalling pathway helps to maintain leukaemia stem cells, which are the very cells that spread the disease, Tannishtha Reya and colleagues report. When a small inhibitory molecule is used to disrupt the pathway in a mouse model, the cancer stem cells become depleted.
Hedgehog, more commonly known for its role in embryonic patterning, has been implicated in several cancers, including CML. The blood cancer is commonly treated with a drug called imatinib, but CML stem cells seem to be resistant to the therapy and CML cells can acquire drug resistance due to additional mutations. Therefore imatinib often stalls but does not cure the disease. The small molecule used in this study, cyclopamine, targets normal and drug-resistant CML cells and stem cells, raising hopes that molecules like this will be useful in CML treatment.
doi: 10.1038/nature07737
리서치 하이라이트
-
7월1일
Criminology: Predicting police enforcement bias in major US citiesNature Human Behaviour
-
7월1일
Space health: The path of most resistance could help limit bone loss during spaceflightScientific Reports
-
6월30일
Microbiology: Transmission of gastrointestinal viruses in salivaNature
-
6월29일
COVID-19: Assessing instances of long COVID in UK health dataNature Communications
-
6월24일
Sport science: New wearable sensor to measure neck strain may detect potential concussionScientific Reports
-
6월23일
Scientific community: Women credited less than men in scientific paper authorshipNature