By IANS,
Washington : Drugs inhibiting a specific fatty acid in rat brains with gliobastoma, one of the most aggressive brain tumours, not only reduce new blood vessel growth and tumour size dramatically but also prolong survival.
“These rat model tumours were developed from human glioblastoma cells and closely mimic human tumours in growth patterns and response to therapy,” said lead researcher David Harder, professor of physiology, Medical College, Wisconsin.
“The concept of targeting blood vessels that feed tumours as an approach to limit tumour growth is not a novel idea,” he says. “However, blocking the specific fatty acid described in this study is novel, and holds great promise for use in humans.”
Harder and colleagues designed these studies on the premise that all cells, including cancerous ones, require oxygen for growth. Blocking formation of specific fatty acids would cut down blood vessel growth and oxygen supply to tumours, retarding growth.
Malignant gliomas are resistant to chemotherapy and radiation, and account for about half of the 3,50,000 brain tumours currently diagnosed in the US.
The study featured as a cover story in the August issue of Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism.
Harder believes that further studies, demonstrating that such drugs work in humans may reveal that higher concentrations or infusions over longer periods of time may be more effective than the results reported in this study.
“If survival time could be extended, with a combination of surgical therapy and infusion with similar drugs, this could be a significant treatment option,” he says.
Earlier studies from the Harder lab have shown that specific fatty acids generated in the brain induce new blood vessel growth known as angiogenesis.