New Treatments Assessed for Melanoma, Ovarian Cancer

Cells have been found to have their own early warning and defense mechanisms against cancer. Determining how these mechanisms work and how they may be used to fight cancer from developing or spreading have been the focus of a new study.

Dr. Angela Zarling and her collaborators at the University of Virginia Health System (UVA; Charlottesville, VA, USA) utilized melanoma and ovarian cancer cells to monitor the chain of molecular activity through which bodies identify and respond to invasive malignances. The researchers are now expanding their study to breast cancer, leukemia, and lymphoma.

Published in the October 2006 issue of the journal Proceedings of the [U.S.] National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the study validates the link between the body's signaling activities and its ability to deploy protective cells--called cytotoxic T cells. The study also demonstrates the ability of these cells to selectively recognize and target tumors.

Malignancies associated with cancer frequently result when wayward signaling pathways within the body stimulate uncontrolled cellular growth, protecting cells from death, and allowing transformed cells to metastasize to other areas. The phosphopeptides evaluated by Dr. Zarling and her team are strongly linked to these pathways and considered capable of generating cytotoxic T cells that clear tumors effectively.

According to Dr. Zarling, the study results provide details about the signaling pathways that occur within the cancer cell and provide a marker that identifies that cell as transformed. Because several peptides identified in the study are shared by other cancers, they could be utilized for vaccines against those malignancies as well.

Working with Dr. Craig Slingluff of the UVA Human Immunotherapy Center (HITC), two of Dr. Zarling's collaborators--Dr. Victor H. Engelhard and Dr. Donald F. Hunt--have successfully developed peptide-based vaccines for melanoma. Over the next several years, these investigators, in collaboration with the HITC, will assess the utility of these phosphopeptides for tumor control and as a cancer vaccine. If effective, they could become the next generation of peptide-based immunotherapy, generating stronger immune responses that enable destruction of tumors with less collateral damage to healthy tissue.



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