Fruitflies and zebrafish join hunt for cancer stem cells

Research partnership

VASTox plc of Oxford, UK, has joined a  European consortium researching new treatments for cancer based on targeting cancer stem cells. The programme, is backed by a €2 million grant from the European Commission under the Sixth Framework Programme.

VASTox will work with five research organisations from across Europe to develop treatments that target cancer stem cells (CSCs). The consortium will be coordinated by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s unit in Italy and includes the University of Lund in Sweden, Cancer Research UK, the UK Medical Research Council, Oxford University and the University of Copenhagen.

Initial research will be focused on two types of cancer: leukaemia and breast cancer. In recent years, CSCs have been identified as an important factor in cancer owing to their ability to both initiate and sustain tumour growth. However, there is no specific treatment that targets them. The consortium aims to identify the CSCs that cause tumour growth, and thereby generate new drug targets.

VASTox has developed high throughput in vitro screens based on transgenic zebrafish and drosophila. The company says that participation in this research programme will complement its existing discovery programmes in cancer and the potential use of stem cells as regenerative medicines.

It used to be thought that most or all cancer cells possessed the ability to self-renew and replenish new cancer cells. But there is now increasing evidence that only a small fraction of tumour cells have the ability to reconstitute a new tumour. The existence of cancer stem cells (CSCs), which are believed to have a role in initiating and sustaining tumour growth, was first documented for leukaemia but has now been extended to include solid tumours, including breast cancer.

CSCs have high levels of multi-drug resistance, which make them difficult to target with current cytotoxic therapies, and they also appear to be less susceptible to immunotherapy.