Target: cancer stem cells
The current cancer treatments they have their “buts”. Some in terms of the selectivity of the cells they attack, and others in terms of toxicity. The team of Houria Boulaiz, a researcher at the Institute Granada Biosanitary Research and the University of Granada, works in the search for an optimal treatment. His bet:that suicide gene cell therapy targeting cancer stem cells may be an option", He emphasizes.
In achieving this goal they have made progress in recent years thanks to a Health Research Grant from the Madrid Mutual Foundation. These grants, which currently have an open application period until March 3 in the foundation's website for researchers from all over Spain who carry out clinical studies in the areas of oncology, organ transplantation, rare diseases, traumatology and Covid-19, represent the accolade to the research career of many young Spaniards who can form their research group, as happened to Houria Boulaiz. “This help was a huge boost for my career. Getting here had cost me many previous “no's”.
The scientific committee of the Fundación Mutua Madrileña, chaired by Dr. Rafael Matesanz, and which is in charge of selecting each year the projects that will benefit from the two million euros of the Fundación Mutua Grants, premium in its selection to researchers under 40 years, in order to promote the figure of the young researcher.
Aid that, to many scientists, comes as the definitive accolade. "Based on this help, I was able to opt for others and create my own laboratory," says Houria. The help of the Mutual Foundation also has allowed the researcher from the University of Granada to take her project to the next level, because so far all of Houria's research has been done in the lab, under the microscope. Now, he is just a few steps away from starting the procedures to enter the clinical phase, with several registered patents and, above all, with the illusion of having a novel route ahead of him that has worked in the laboratory to attack cancer.
Mother cells: those ultimately responsible
The line of research of his laboratory and object of this project is based on the fact that stem cells Carcinogenic are responsible for the initiation of the tumor and its recurrence. However, none of the current treatments are directed at them. Most target cells that are dividing uncontrollably and causing the tumor to grow. “We target the cancer stem cells that are ultimately responsible for tumor initiation and recurrence. This is something that is proven,” she explains.
In their strategy, the team targets cancer stem cells with gene therapy using suicide genes. In other words, it introduces -by means of a vector- a bacterial gene that only acts if it finds certain cells -in this case, cancer stem cells- and, if it finds them, it stops their cell cycle and induces programmed cell death with the formation of pores in tumor cells (a process called pyroptosis), destroying them.
The line of research of this project is based on the fact that cancer stem cells are responsible for the initiation of the tumor and its reappearance
The induction of the expression of the gene (which is actually two genes, because during the investigation they have identified a pair of bacterial genes with anticancer potential, the ldrB and hokD) is totally physiological since it is under the control of a promoter whose activating protein, survivin, is overexpressed in cancer stem cells and hardly expressed in healthy tissue. This feature gives the system a specificity that many current cancer treatments lack.
In addition, another advantage of the developed system is that expresses fluorescence, which makes it possible to track tumor cells in case of metastasis, conferring both a therapeutic and a diagnostic function, because it allows detecting where these cancer stem cells "hide" in the body.
The work of this group from the University of Granada is an example of the fundamental role that research plays in advancing in the treatment of diseases and the importance of committing to it, as the University of Granada has been doing for 19 years. Mutua Madrileña Foundation, which has already allocated more than 63 million euros for this purpose.