Researchers Discover Drug Destroys Human Cancer Stem Cells but Not Healthy Ones

Released: 5/16/2012 2:15 PM EDT Embargo expired: 5/24/2012 12:00 PM EDT Source: McMaster University

Newswise Hamilton, ON (May 24, 2012) -- A team of scientists at McMaster University has discovered a drug, thioridazine, successfully kills cancer stem cells in the human while avoiding the toxic side-effects of conventional cancer treatments.

The unusual aspect of our finding is the way this human-ready drug actually kills cancer stem cells; by changing them into cells that are non-cancerous, said Mick Bhatia, the principal investigator for the study and scientific director of McMasters Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine.

Unlike chemotherapy and radiation, thioridazine appears to have no effect on normal stem cells.

The research, published today in the science journal CELL, holds the promise of a new strategy and discovery pipeline for the development of anticancer drugs in the treatment of various cancers. The research team has identified another dozen drugs that have good potential for the same response.

For 15 years, some researchers have believed stem cells are the source of many cancers. In 1997, Canadian researchers first identified cancer stem cells in certain types of leukemia. Cancer stem cells have since been identified in blood, breast, brain, lung, gastrointestinal, prostate and ovarian cancer.

To test more than a dozen different compounds, McMaster researchers pioneered a fully automated robotic system to identify several drugs, including thioridazine.

Now we can test thousands of compounds, eventually defining a candidate drug that has little effect on normal stem cells but kills the cells that start the tumor, said Bhatia.

The next step is to test thioridazine in clinical trials, focusing on patients with acute myeloid leukemia whose disease has relapsed after chemotherapy. Bhatia wants to find out if the drug can put their cancer into remission, and by targeting the root of the cancer (cancer stem cells) prevent the cancer from coming back. Researchers at McMaster have already designed how these trials would be done.

Bhatias team found thioridazine works through the dopamine receptor on the surface of the cancer cells in both leukemia and breast cancer patients. This means it may be possible to use it as a biomarker that would allow early detection and treatment of breast cancer and early signs of leukemia progression, he said.

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Researchers Discover Drug Destroys Human Cancer Stem Cells but Not Healthy Ones