Most people who die from cancer do so because their
tumour has spread, or metastasised. Yet most of today's cancer drugs
don't stop metastasis, they just kill any cancer cells they come into
contact with.
The hope is that the compound could be part of a new class of drugs designed to block tumor spread. "This could be a very important advance," says Andrew Reynolds of the Institute of Cancer Research in London. Cancers are much easier to treat if they have not yet spread.
A few years ago, a team led by Takashi Nojiri
of Osaka University in Japan was exploring whether giving a drug called
Atrial Natriuretic Peptide (ANP) to patients before lung cancer surgery
could reduce subsequent heart problems. ANP is a signalling molecule
found in the heart and has been used as a treatment for heart failure in
Japan for 20 years.
This approach worked, and it also had another
benefit. Two years later, 91 per cent of people treated with ANP were
free from secondary tumors, compared with 75 per cent of a control
group.
Because ANP affects the blood vessels rather than the
cancer cells, it could be used for all kinds of tumors, says Nojiri,
who is working with the Japanese drug company Shionogi to turn ANP into a cancer drug.
As in Nojiri's study, if given before
surgery, it could be used to reduce the chance of the operation in helping the cancer tumors spread elsewhere in the body. It is thought that cutting into
the tumor sometimes lets cancer cells escape. ANP could also be used as a general anti-metastasis drug, given whether or not people need cancer surgery.
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