“People will not die of cancer if our prediction is true.” That’s how categorical Jian-Guo Geng, professor at the University of Michigan (USA) and one of the authors of a study published in the prestigious journal Nature, has shown that it could revolutionize the treatment of cancer, and could even mean a cure.
The lethal doses for the human body that chemotherapy and radiation treatment entail have ended many lives before the cancerous tumor they were attacking. That could change, as the U.S. study shows a biological mechanism has been discovered that sustains the intestinal tract until it can withstand treatments strong enough to kill the cancer. In Geng’s words, “now, there is a way to make a patient tolerate lethal doses of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.”
Stem cells
Stem cells are responsible for regenerating and repairing the body’s tissues, but in the case of aggressive cancer treatments, the number of stem cells in the adult intestine is not sufficient to tolerate such strong doses. As a consequence, the intestine is left unprotected so that nutrients are no longer ingested, bacterial toxins from the intestine enter into circulation with the blood and the body stops performing some functions.
The study has discovered that the combination of certain proteins linked to molecules – specifically the molecules R-spondin1 and Slit2 – on intestinal stem cells can repair the tissues damaged by the treatment, as published by Europa Press. Dr. Geng clarified that “if you can keep the intestine going you can live longer”, that increased resistance would allow “cure later, at the metastatic cancer stage”.
Success in mouse trials
The authors of the study have been working for more than a decade with the molecules in question and have obtained a great result in tests on mice. Between 50 and 75% of the mice treated with this biological mechanism have survived doses of chemotherapy so lethal that they have killed the rodents that did not receive the molecule. The authors of the study are now seeking to achieve 100% success in mice, although they acknowledge that they have not yet tested it in humans.
In short, this study represents an important advance in the fight against cancer, which claims thousands of lives every year and has already become the greatest health challenge in the Western world.