Researchers have uncovered experimental compounds to block treatment targets for blood cancer

recently, researchers at the University of North Carolina's Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center discovered a highly active cellular signal that helps tumors grow in invasive blood cancers. They have also developed an experimental treatment to block signals and slow tumor growth.
Researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they have identified a new treatment target for primary fluid lymphoma, a non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, also known as human herpes virus-8, caused by a carbossy sarcoma-related herpes virus infection.
“ We found a protein called Tyro3 that was highly increased to a non-Hodgkin's lymphoma subtype, called primary fluid lymphoma," said Dr. Blossom Damania, an associate researcher at the UNC Lineberger School of Medicine, a distinguished professor of microbiology and immunology at Cary C. "
primary fluid lymphoma is a highly invasive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma subtype, a blood cancer involving abnormally growing white blood cells.
“ Patients with primary fluid lymphoma have poor prognosis and a medium survival time of about six months after diagnosis," said Jason Wong, lead author of the paper and a graduate student in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. "Since current treatment options may not be effective, finding new treatment targets is a high priority."
In their recent study, Damania and her colleagues looked for cell signals called kinases in primary fluid lymphoma and other types of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. They worked with Dr. Gary Johnson of the University of North Carolina at Lineberger's, a renowned professor at the UNC School of Medicine, to show the activity of kinase signals in cancer cells. Kinase helps control cell signaling and tells cells to grow and divide. Their study showed that Tyro3 kinase is uniquely overactive in primary fluid lymphoma cells compared to normal cells, and they found that it activates pathfours that promote cancer survival.
When they treated cells with the compound UNC3810A they developed, they saw that dose-dependent activation of cell death and significant inhibition of tumor growth were developed at unC Lineberger's Dr. Xiaodong Wang laboratory, where he was an associate professor of research at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy and director of the Drug Chemistry Division at UNC's Center for Combined Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery.
“ In this study, UNC3810A was used as an in vivo tool compound to understand the biological role of Tyro3 in primary fluid lymphoma," Wang said."We've found a new target in the non-Hodgkin's lymphoma subtype, and other types of cancers besides lymphoma can raise that target, so the drugs we've developed may be used for a variety of cancers," Damania said.
In addition to Damiania, Johnson and Wang, other authors include Timothy J. Stuhlmiller, Louise C. Giffin, Carolina Lin, Rachele Bigi, Jichen Zhao, Weihe Zhang, Ariana G. Bravo Cruz, Steven Park, H. Shelton Earp, Dirk P.
Dettmer and Stephen V. Frye。
The study and researchers are supported by the National Cancer Institute, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Treatment Grant, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Association, the Burroughs Wellcome Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the University Cancer Research Fund. （cyy123.com）