Building on their earlier work, Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered that an apparently nontoxic cellular "energy blocker" can eradicate large liver tumors grown in rats. Six months to more than a year after treatment was stopped, the rats are still cancer free.
While the results are dramatic, clinical trials with the chemical, 3-bromopyruvate, are likely some years away, says the study's leader, Young Ko, Ph.D., assistant professor of radiology and biological chemistry. If tests in the lab continue to be promising, however, the chemical or one like it may become an option for treating advanced liver cancers and perhaps other tumors in people.
"Liver cancer usually isn’t detected in people until it’s difficult or impossible to treat, and many other aggressive cancers spread to the liver, so we need more treatment options," says Peter Pedersen, Ph.D., professor of biological chemistry in the Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences at Johns Hopkins. "The compound Dr. Ko tested in animals targets a fundamental process cancer cells need to survive, can kill big tumors, and appears so far to have little or no effect on normal tissues."
In fact, Ko says she hasn't been able to find a toxic dose of the compound, which blocks the two ways cancer cells make energy. In earlier experiments with rabbits with liver cancer, reported in 2002, no obvious toxic effects were seen, either. There is a patent pending on possible cancer applications of the compound.
While the details of normal cells' protection are still unclear, the scientists suggest cancer cells well-known appetite for sugar might be behind their demise. Ko, who first studied the compound as a graduate student at Washington State University in 1990 and initiated its study at Hopkins, has shown that it completely blocks cancer cells' conversion of sugar into usable energy, a process necessary to fuel the cells' functions and growth.
"We believe this is the first time that a drug has blocked both ways cancer cells make energy and are very happy that it seems so effective against advanced liver cancers," says Ko. "Usually researchers don't try to attack advanced cancers because success seems unlikely. But these are the very cancers we must learn to defeat if we are to win the war on cancer."
Sugar, or glucose, is brought into cells and converted into useable energy, a molecule called ATP, by either of two processes. Another product of this conversion, a molecule called lactate, is then taken out of the cell by specialized transporters.
But because cancer cells use so much more sugar and make so much more lactate than normal cells, the researchers suggest cancer cells may be riddled with more of the "two-way streets" that transport lactate. And because 3-bromopyruvate looks very similar to lactate, it might travel those same roads, sneaking into cancer cells like a Trojan horse, suggests Ko.