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A Key to Fighting Prostate Cancer? UNMC Research May Lead to Treatments to Keep the Disease From Spreading to Bones.

Posted on: Monday, 16 May 2005, 21:01 CDT

Researchers at the University of Nebraska Medical Center have identified a mechanism that allows prostate cancer to invade bones in rodents -- a finding that paves the way for treatments to prevent similar destruction in humans.

The discovery was published as the cover story of the May issue of the journal Cancer Cell, which was released online late Monday morning.

It stands to be important. Prostate cancer kills about 30,000 men in the United States each year, primarily when the cancer has spread into the bone. Tumors in the bone are notoriously painful and often resistant to treatments.

Rakesh Singh, associate professor of pathology and microbiology, and Mitsuru Futakuchi, a visiting Japanese professor and postdoctoral research fellow, headed the portion of the research done at UNMC.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and Nagoya City University Medical School in Japan also were involved in the five-year study.

Singh said Japanese researchers placed prostate cancer tumors on bones in rodents to "basically mimic the changes which we usually see in bone metastases of prostate cancer in humans."

UNMC researchers identified the genes expressed in bone destruction in those rodents, and scientists in Tennessee helped study some of the mechanisms at play.

Collectively, they found that an enzyme called MMP-7 turned a normally harmless molecule into a substance that promoted bone deterioration and allowed tumor growth.

Singh said the finding suggests that drugs to inhibit MMP-7 eventually could help prostate cancer patients. Such drugs had been tested on other cancers, with disappointing results, but haven't been tested on prostate cancer in the bone.

"Maybe those inhibitors will find a new avenue, a new role," he said.

Singh said the same enzyme may also be at work in breast cancer, another cancer which commonly spreads to bone. Already, UNMC is studying that possibility in mice. "We are trying to find if it is the same mechanism," Singh said.

It will take several years before the finding could lead to human treatments, if any.

Singh said researchers and clinicians would need to study the mechanism in prostate cancer patients, develop and test treatments on rodents and humans, and secure approval for any that prove successful.

Singh said he is hopeful, however, that the discovery eventually will prevent or at least slow bone tumors in prostate cancer.

"It's a long road ahead," said Singh. "But the tools are there."

Source: Omaha World - Herald

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