- Stem cell study aims to improve prospects for lung cancer sufferers
- Professor Sikora suggests that lung cancer is associated with poverty
- Current therapies for lung cancer extend life by only a few months
- Lung cancer kills more people than any other cancer
Lung cancer and cutting edge stem cell therapy
In 2015 a combined stem cell and gene therapy for lung cancer started its first clinical study in the UK. Professor Sam Janes of University College London, the study’s leader, said: “This will be the first UK cell therapy for lung cancer, and the biggest manufacturing of cells of its kind.”
Dr Chris Watkins, director of translational research at the Medical Research Council, which is funding the study, said: “Lung cancer kills more men and women than any other cancer, and improving the outcome for patients with this terrible disease is one of the biggest challenges we face. This new therapy, which uses modified stem cells to target the tumour directly is truly at the cutting edge.”
Few studies
The use of stem cells for treating lung diseases has increasing appeal, but as yet, little is known about the effects of administering stem cell therapy to patients with lung diseases. Currently, there are only a small number of approved clinical studies in the US and Canada investigating cell therapy approaches for lung diseases. Patrick O’Brien a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at University College Hospital, London describes an initiative to create a national stem cell bank in the UK:
Lung cancer
Lung cancer is the most common cancer worldwide, accounting for 1.8 million new cases and 1.6 million deaths in 2012. This year, an estimated 224,210 adults in the US, 40,000 in the UK, and 169,000 in India will be diagnosed with lung cancer, 90% of which are and caused by smoking. Of those diagnosed, 95% will die within ten years, although early stage lung cancer has a much better survival rate. Professor Karol Sikora, a world respected oncologist, and campaigner for better universal cancer treatment, suggests that lung cancer is associated with poverty:
 Traditional therapies
Cell-gene therapy holds out new hope. “Lung cancer is very difficult to treat because the vast majority of patients are not diagnosed until the cancer has spread to other parts of the body. One therapy option for these patients is chemotherapy, but even if successful this treatment can normally only extend lives by a handful of months,” says Janes. Current therapeutic strategies of chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and clinical studies with new-targeted therapies have only demonstrated, at best, extension in survival by a few months.
Innovative approach
“We aim to improve prospects for lung cancer patients by using a highly targeted therapy using stem cells, which have an innate tendency to home in on tumours when they’re injected into the body. Once there, they switch on a ‘kill’ pathway in the cancer cells, leaving healthy surrounding cells untouched,” says Janes. His study will test the treatment in human volunteers, firstly to check that the treatment is safe, and then in 56 lung cancer patients to see how effective the gene-cell therapy compares with standard care. Each patient in the study will receive three infusions comprised of billions of cells in parallel with chemotherapy.
Takeaways
A key advantage of Janes’ proposed treatment is that the cells do not have to be closely matched to a person’s tissue type or genetic profile. They are simply taken “off the shelf” from existing bone marrow supplies. This is because the cells have relatively few proteins on their surface, and do not induce an immune response in the recipient.
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