University Of South Australia Develops Radioimmunotherapy Protocol To Target Pancreatic Cancer
Source: Thailand Medical News Nov 26, 2019 4 years, 11 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 9 hours, 6 minutes ago
Globally, more than 1,180 individuals are diagnosed with
pancreatic cancer each day. Within 12 months of diagnosis, 85% will die from it as its one of the most deadly cancers.
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Despite being lethal, a new research from the University of South Australia could help vastly improve the prognosis for
pancreatic cancer patients.
Utilizing a new targeted
radioimmunotherapy agent, UniSA Professor of Medical Radiation Science, Eva Bezak, hopes to more accurately target and kill pancreatic cancer cells.
The team of researchers, including Ph.D. student Ashleigh Hull and molecular biologist Dr. Judy Li, who are combining a targeting protein and a radioisotope, known as actinium-225, to create a
radioimmunoconjugate capable of treating cancer are lead by Prof Bezak .
Professor Eva Bezak told
Thailand Medical News via a phone interview, "Once the conjugate is attached to a specific receptor on a cancer cell, the radioisotope will emit an alpha particle of high energy that will move through the cancer cell, like a bulldozer or a magic bullet,depositing its energy inside the cancer cell. In the process, it will destroy the DNA and you will have a highly targeted therapy where the damage is deposited very locally to a cancer cell while minimising the damage to healthy tissue."
Prof Bezak says the highly targeted treatment has the promise to minimise patients side effects.
She added, "When you use chemotherapy, for example, it is often non-targeted. It's a systemic type of therapy that will affect the healthy tissue as well as cancerous tissues and hence patients have severe side effects. Our conjugate labelled with the radioactive isotope will travel through patients' bodies but it will only attach itself to pancreatic cancer cells. It will not attach itself to healthy cells."
Currently,
pancreatic cancer is the fifth most common cause of death in Australia with a five-year survival rate of 9.8 per cent. Globally, it is the seventh leading cause of cancer-related deaths but the third most common cancer in the United States.
Prof Bezak added, "Despite all the advances in chemotherapy, radiotherapy and other therapies, the mean survival time over five years has not changed much in the last 40 years. So, we need to come up with novel therapies, and potentially even a combination of therapies, to really win the war on this deadly cancer."
Prof Bezak says the "up-and-coming" therapy is not only highly targeted but far more potent to cancer cells than previous treatments. For other cancers, studies have primarily been using a beta-particle emitting radioisotopes such as lutetium-177. The problem is that the beta particles are not damaging enough for advanced metastatic cancer, so, while they have been used, the therapeutic outcome is not as high as what could be achieved with alpha particles.
As well as developing the new agent, Prof Bezak says the researchers will examine at what stage a cancerous receptor
becomes present in the pancreas.
She added,"We will be looking at inflamed pancreas which is linked to development of
pancreatic cancer, as well as pre-cancerous pancreatic lesions. We want to identify the switch time, when the receptor starts emerging, whether it is already in that precancerous stage, like in chronic inflammation, or whether it's only present once it is turned completely
cancerous."
Prof Bezak says the team hopes to begin in vitro tests by the end of the year After that , they hope to start actual clinical human trials.
