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New Discovery to Give Children an Edge in Fighting Cancer
Dr. Sorensen found that cells from a common childhood cancer behave much differently when placed in liquid suspension compared to how they grow in solid tissues. It is an important discovery, because one of the great challenges in treating childhood cancer is metastasis – when cancer cells break away from the original tumour and travel through the blood or other fluids to form tumours in another part of the body.
Dr. Sorensen took cells from Ewing Sarcomas – the second most common pediatric cancer of bone – and cultured them in a solution mimicking the blood. He found that the cells formed small clusters in solution, and that these clusters express a protein called E-cadherin, normally not found in sarcomas. The presence of this protein allows the cell clusters to then activate another protein called ErbB4 that helps to regulate growth in the tumour cells and renders these cells resistant to chemotherapy.
Thanks to this breakthrough discovery Dr. Sorensen’s team is now working with pharmaceutical companies to develop therapies to block these cancer enabling proteins. By blocking these proteins chemotherapy will be much more effective in treating children with Ewing Sarcomas and other cancers.
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