Existing chemotherapy approaches treat cancer by targeting cells that are actively multiplying and have a high metabolic rate.

However, cancer stem cells can escape this targeting, leading to chemotherapy-resistant cancer and disease relapse.

Researchers suspect that the microenvironment in which some cancer stem cells develop may give them protection from chemotherapy treatments.

In research described in the JCI, a team of researchers led by Trang Hoang at the University of Montreal determined that pre-leukaemic stem cells were less sensitive to current chemotherapy drugs.

The team then developed a powerful screening method to identify drugs that more effectively target and kill these pre-cancerous cells.

They determined that pre-leukaemic stem cells were dependent upon specific features in the bone marrow environment for survival.

By mimicking these features in a drug screening assay, the researchers were able to identify a compound called 2-methyoxyestradiol that reduced survival of pre-leukaemic cells without affecting normal cells.

Treatment with 2-methyoxyestradiol also reduced the development of leukaemia in a mouse model.

The use of this and similar stem cell-targeted screening assays may lead to identification of novel approaches for treating chemotherapy-resistant and relapsed cancer.

Reference

Gerby, Diogo, Veiga et al., High-throughput screening in niche-based assay identifies compounds to target preleukemic stem cells, The Journal of Clinical Investigation, October 31, 2016

Source: JCI Journals