Skin cancer breakthrough: Arthritis drug could new weapon against melanoma

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Leflunomide, a drug for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, the growth of malignant melanoma, Adeadly can form of skin cancer, according to new research led by the University of East Anglia (UAE) in the United Kingdom and children Hospital Boston to inhibit United States.

You can read how UAE researchers Dr. grant Wheeler and Dr Matt Tomlinson and colleagues published online in an article, the discovery made in nature of this week.

The breakthrough is discovery exciting scientists and clinicians, because it needs a drug that is already licensed for another disease, much less time in court than it for a never before leading to speculation that this treatment could be available in the next five years tested.

Wheeler, the UEA's School of biological of Sciences, told the press, increase the number of deaths from melanoma and we desperate new and better treatments.

"We are very optimistic that this research to novel therapies for melanoma tumors, which work together with other therapies leads, will help to stop them progressing," he added.

For the study screened Wheeler, Tomlinson and colleagues thousands of connections looking for likely candidates by testing their ability to the development of pigment cells in tadpoles have.

She used tadpole pigment cells because they are similar to human melanocytes produce melanin, the pigment that is mainly responsible for skin color. Melanoma occurs when melanocytes grow out of control.

The researchers found a number of likely candidates, and after it tests in lab mice, found that these Leflunomide significantly reduced tumor growth.

You also have the effect of the combination of leflunomid with PLX4720, a promising new drug, currently being tested for the treatment of melanoma, tested and found that it is almost completely stop tumour growth.

The next stage is to carry out clinical trials of leflunomid on the treatment of melanoma, and because it is already approved for the treatment of arthritis, the studies should successfully as it could be available in about five years, half of the usual time scale for a new drug.

Another article in the same issue of nature describes some of the researchers of this study, as they and others, a new gene called SETDB1, identify colleagues zebrafish the responsible for the for the development of Melanoma is.

Surprisingly, melanocytes, the pigment-producing cells in humans and tadpoles, are responsible for the production of dark stripes on a zebra fish.

To find the gene, the researchers at Boston children's Hospital developed a transgenic zebrafish, which had two additional functions, which lead to melanoma: the right mutation in a gene called BRAF, and the lack of the p53 tumor suppressor gene.

She started with a hunch that it took more than mutations in the BRAF and the absence of p53 trigger malignant tumors, and the new model one uses zebrafish, laboriously by all other genes, according to the other views.

The Xenopus tadpole used to the UEA, to find leflunomid as a possible treatment for melanoma, and this zebra fish model of children's Hospital Boston, examples of the power of developmental models are large number of connections to use screen.

The researchers hope that such approaches still more links and genes as candidates for other diseases to discover.

As lead author Dr. Richard White children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, is to know more about cancer for mutations in genes, but also to know the types of cells, not just a matter of finding that tumors in the spring.

"By studying cancer development in zebra fish and frogs, we a unique insight into the earliest changes that occur in these cells", said White.

Melanoma is the most aggressive form of skin cancer and, in contrast to most other cancer types, it is on the rise. It accounts for 5% of skin cancer.

More than 10,000 people are diagnosed; with melanoma in the UK every year This number of 68,000 in 2009, when 8,700 American from the disease died was in the United States.

If diagnosed at an early stage melanoma tumors can be removed safely with surgery, but if diagnosed in advanced stages, the chances of survival are slim.

More than 2,000 people die each year in the United Kingdom, because their Melanoma is back to be surgically removed.

If you find changes to the shape or color of the existing pier on site or a new lump anywhere on the skin, you get a doctor to check, because they are possible signs of melanoma.

"DHODH modulates transcriptional elongation in the neural crest and melanoma."
Richard Mark white, Jennifer Cech, Sutheera Ratanasirintrawoot, Charles y. Lin, Peter B. Rahl, Christopher j. Burke, Erin Langdon, Matthew L. Tomlinson, Jack Mosher, Charles Kaufman, et al.
Nature 471, 518-522, released N 23 March 2011
DOI: 10.1038 / nature09882

Additional source: University of East Anglia (23 Mar 2011)., UMass Medical School (24 Mar 2011).

Posted by: Catharine paddock, PhD
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