May is National Cancer Research Month, so we thought we’d highlight exciting cancer research underway at Sanford-Burnham. Today, we focus on a few of the strategies our researchers are pursuing to better understand the pathologies of cancer tumors—and stop them in their tracks.
May is National Cancer Research Month
Left: Medulloblastoma tumor (green) from untreated mouse. Right: Corresponding tissue from mouse treated with bFGF lacks tumor growth.
Brain tumors arising from different cell types might require different—and more personalized—treatment approaches.
Cancers arise when a normal cell acquires a mutation in a gene that regulates cellular growth or survival. But the particular cell this mutation happens in—the cell of origin—can have an enormous impact on the behavior of the tumor, and on the strategies used to treat it.
Robert Wechsler-Reya, Ph.D., professor and director of the Tumor Development Program in Sanford-Burnham’s NCI-designated Cancer Center, and his team study medulloblastoma, the most common malignant brain cancer in children. A few years ago, they made an important discovery: medulloblastoma can originate from one of two cell types: 1) stem cells, which can make all the different cell types in the brain or 2) neuronal progenitor cells, which can only make neurons.
Stem cells and progenitor cells are regulated by different growth factors. So, Wechsler-Reya thought, maybe the tumors arising from these cells respond differently to different therapies…