DOHA: Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College-Qatar (WCMC-Q) have taken a major step towards understanding why certain cancers often recur after they have been treated with conventional therapies.
The research, which focused on a specific protein that allows skin, prostate and breast cancers to recur after initially successful treatment, paves the way for future studies that could lead to development of a new generation of more effective anti-cancer drugs.
The study demonstrated the role of a protein, appropriately named ‘BAD protein’, in the survival and renewal of some cancer cells — known as Cancer Stem Cells — which are able to resist even the most advanced anti-cancer drugs available.
Led by WCMC-Q’s Professor of Genetic Medicine and Immunology, Dr Lotfi Chouchane, the project is the result of a joint effort by researchers from WCMC-Q, Qatar Biomedical Research Institute and Sidra Medical and Research Center, all of which are Qatar Foundation member organisations. Additional contributions were made by medical institutions in China and the United States.
Dr Chouchane said, “The problem with existing cancer treatments is that they can target and kill most of the cancer cells, but they are not able to target the cancer stem cells. These cancer stem cells are only a small proportion of the total number of cancer cells, but they are very important because they are able to sustain tumor growth, which means the cancer comes back.
“We were able to show that the BAD protein not only plays a role in the survival of cancer stem cells, but that it is actually essential for their survival. This makes BAD an extremely attractive target for research for new, more effective cancer therapies.”
The study, titled ‘Targeting proapoptotic protein BAD inhibits survival and self-renewal of cancer stem cells’, has now been published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Cell Death and Differentiation, part of the prestigious Nature series of journals.
Funding of the project was done by the Biomedical Research Programme of Qatar Foundation, which supports the research effort at WCMC-Q, and by Qatar Biomedical Research Institute.
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