J Hepatol: the researchers showed the potential of targeting cancer stem cells to treat liver cancer

October 17, 2019 / BIOON / -- liver cancer is the second largest cancer-related death cause in the world The most common primary liver cancer in adults is called liver cell carcinoma (HCC) About 780000 people die of HCC every year Even with advanced surgical treatment or transplantation, the 5-year survival rate of HCC patients is still very low, which is caused by frequent recurrence of HCC Now a new study by researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) shows a potential way to treat advanced liver cancer, such as HCC A team of NUS scientists led by Dr Toh Tan boon, associate professor Edward Chow of the NUS cancer Science Institute (CSI) and head of the transformation Core Laboratory of the NUS Health Institute, has shown that a small molecule drug targeting JAK / STSt can be used to fight cancer Photo source: National University of Singapore "in clinical trials of other diseases, the molecular mechanism of targeting driven chemotherapy resistance has shown success Therefore, this targeted therapy can be used as an adjuvant therapy to improve the clinical prognosis of HCC patients "Said Chow Their findings are published in the recent journal of Hepatology Inhibition of JAK / STAT signaling pathway is an important group of proteins, which controls a wide range of biological functions, including immune response and cell development This pathway usually responds to external signals of cells, opens specific genomes, helps cells develop normally or allows the immune system to fight infection Therefore, if the JAK / STAT signal pathway goes wrong in some way, it will lead to tumor formation In their study, the team targeted the JAK / STAT pathway to inhibit its role in tumor formation They found that a class of cancer "stem cell like" cells are sensitive to a class of small molecule drugs that inhibit the JAK / STAT pathway These stem cell like cells can self renew and are responsible for causing cancer cells that make up tumors Dr Toh Tan boon explained the significance of these findings: "we can now potentially use small molecular compounds to target this small group of cancer stem cells, which are often the cause of tumor recurrence "Small molecule drug phenology can effectively delay the progress of cancer Researchers can isolate these cancer cells that cause cancer, and they are often the main culprit of drug resistance that causes cancer recurrence They found that an important cancer pathway, the JAK / STAT signaling pathway, is highly activated in this cancer stem cell like cell population In this study, JAK / STAT inhibitors for cancer stem cells can effectively reduce cancer progression in preclinical models of liver cancer The team found that after drug treatment, tumor formation decreased by 50% "This study highlights a new strategy for the treatment of liver cancer patients, whose tumors show abnormal activity of important cellular pathways," said Lim jhin Jieh, a doctoral student at CSI and one of the first authors of the paper Blocking the activity of another pathway with small molecule drugs can effectively cure cancer and prevent recurrence "These findings further prove that JAK / STAT therapy targeting cancer stem cells is essential for the therapeutic effect of liver cancer "The next step is to test this concept in our collection of tumor xenotransplantation and organ samples from clinically relevant patient sources," said Chow "JAK / STAT inhibitors are also currently used in clinical trials to treat other solid cancers Reference materials: Tan boon Toh et al Targeting JAK / STAT pathway as a thermal strategy against SP / CD44 + regulatory cells in Akt / β - Catenin driven hpatocellular carcinoma, Journal of Hepatology (2019) Doi: 10.1016/j.jhep.2019.08.035