By Admin at 9 Nov 2015, 16:54 PM

The mosquito-borne infection malaria causes more than 1 million deaths a year, but researchers believe a protein produced by the destructive disease may have the potential to help fight cancer.

Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to malaria because the malarial protein VAR2CSA binds to a specific type of sugar molecule found in the placenta. That sugar molecule is also found in most cancers, which makes sense since both cancer and placentas are fast growing and capable of crowding out other tissues.

Researchers from the University of British Colombia (UBC), Vancouver Costal Health and the BC Cancer Agency, in partnership with researchers at the University of Copenhagen, believe the VAR2CSA protein could provide an ideal tool for carrying anti-cancer drugs to tumors, where they could then reach and target the sugar molecule.

Lead researcher Mads Daugaard, an assistant professor of urologic science at UBC and a senior research scientist at the Vancouver Prostate Centre, part of the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, told EurekAlert:

"Scientists have spent decades trying to find biochemical similarities between placenta tissue and cancer, but we just didn't have the technology to find it … When my colleagues discovered how malaria uses VAR2CSA to embed itself in the placenta, we immediately saw its potential to deliver cancer drugs in a precise, controlled way to tumors."

 In fact, when the researchers attached a toxin to VAR2CSA and used it to treat both normal and cancer cell lines, the drug compound successfully targeted and killed more than 95 percent of the cancer cells. The drug compound yielded equally impressive results in a mouse study:

• In mice with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the treated tumors shrunk to one-quarter the size of the control group’s tumors
• In mice with prostate cancer, tumors completely disappeared in two of the six treated mice within one month of first treatment
• In mice with metastatic breast cancer, five out of six treated mice were cured of metastatic disease

Also promising, no adverse effects were seen in the mice following treatment. The research team said they are “vigorously pursing” this possibility of targeting sugar molecules to treat pediatric and adult cancers, calling it an “extraordinary finding.”

The drug compound is currently being developed for clinical trials in humans with results expected in three to four years. Ali Salanti, a professor of immunology and microbiology at the Centre for Medical Parasitology, at University of Copenhagen, noted the paradoxical nature of such a discovery to EurekAlert:

"There is some irony that a disease as destructive as malaria might be exploited to treat another dreaded disease.”

Sources:
Cancer Cell October 12, 2015
EurekAlert October 16, 2015

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