The placenta is an organ, which within a few months grows from only few cells into an organ weighing approx. two pounds, and it provides the embryo with oxygen and nourishment in a relatively foreign environment.
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Project leader Mads Daugaard says this is a departure from chemotherapy, the standard treatment for most types of cancer.
His team of Danish researchers made their discovery while studying how the parasite Plasmodium falciparum, a species that causes malaria in pregnant women, attaches to cells in the placenta.
A Copenhagen-based team of scientists recreated the protein used by the malaria parasite and then added a toxin. Here it attaches itself and is absorbed to release the toxin inside and bring about cell death.
“But we’re optimistic because the protein appears to only attach itself to a carbohydrate that is only found in the placenta and in cancer tumors in humans”.
‘In the placenta, it helps ensure fast growth. “When my colleagues discovered how malaria uses VAR2CSA to embed itself in the placenta, we immediately saw its potential to deliver cancer drugs in a precise, controlled way to tumours”.
The carbohydrate the Malaria parasite attaches itself in the placenta has been found to be identical with what is found in cancer cells that brings about their development. The process was observed in mice with cancer and in cell structures, The Local reports.
Apparently, scientists have been searching for similarities between the growth of a placenta and a tumor for decades. The prostate cancer tumours vanished in two out of the six mice a month after receiving the first dose, while with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the tumours were about the quarter of the size of the tumours in the control group. Five out of six treated mice with metastatic bone cancer were alive after nearly eight weeks, while none of the control group survived.
The game-changing treatment could be tested on humans in as little as four years, offering hope to millions.
The booby-trapped malaria protein can attack more than 90% of all types of tumors.
Pascal Meier, of the Institute of Cancer Research, said: “If it turns out the presence of this newly discovered cancer-specific marker is indeed present on the surface of most cancer cells, but absent on normal cells, then this could change the way we will treat cancer patients in future”.
John and a team of scientists at Kairos Therapeutics have developed a novel technology to arm antibodies and other targeting proteins with high potency toxins that could be used to specifically kill cancer cells. “We have seen that three doses can arrest growth in a tumour and even make it shrink”, said Thomas Mandel Clausen, a PhD student at UBC.
Dr. Mads Daugaard with UBC says researchers have found the malarial protein could provide the tool for carrying drugs to tumours.
Unfortunately, the treatment would not be available for pregnant women.
Professor Salanti said: ‘Expressed in popular terms, the toxin will believe that the placenta is a tumour and kill it, in exactly the same way it will believe that the tumour is a placenta’.
VAR2pharmaceuticals is a biotech company created by the University of Copenhagen in collaboration with the research scientists to further the clinical development.
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‘The earliest possible test scenario is in four years time, ‘ Professor Salanti revealed.
