Each year, more than 150,000 cases of childhood cancer are diagnosed worldwide. Find a cure to stop this disease It is one of the greatest wishes we all have, and something that researchers have been working on for decades.
The Cancer Network Biomedical Research Center (Ciberonc) and the Cancer Research Center of Salamanca have concluded a six-year study in which have identified a gene that could help stop one of the pediatric cancers most common: acute lymphoblastic leukemia of T lymphocytes.
One more step in the fight against childhood cancer
The study, published in the journal Cancer Cell has been carried out by the Biomedical Research Center in Cancer Network, through a group led by the researcher Xosé Bustelo, of the Cancer Research Center of Salamanca.
The conclusions reached by the scientists involved in this research throw a ray of light and hope in the healing of one of the main pediatric cancers, the acute lymphoblastic T lymphocyte leukemia.
T lymphocytes are cells of the immune system whose function is to find and destroy cells affected by cancer or that have been infected by viruses or other pathogens. But sometimes, these lymphocytes undergo genetic alterations that transform them from protectors to tumors, causing acute lymphoblastic leukemia of T lymphocytes, the most common cancer in children in Spain.
After years of study it has been discovered that the VAV1 gene, usually involved in the formation of tumors of different types, It can also act as a suppressant in this specific type of leukemia, that is, it can help stop it.
This would lead to the creation of specific drugs that act as a brake on the formation of tumor cells, according to the newspaper La Nueva Crónica:
"This work has shown that VAV1, through the formation of a multiproteic complex with the CBL-B protein, literally eats the ICN1 accelerator causing it to disappear from the tumor cells. This causes their growth to stop and eventually they die "
"If we reactivate VAV1 we can once again stop the growth of these genetically altered cells and induce their death very quickly. This suggests that, in the long term, the design of therapeutic pathways that could reproduce the same effect in patients could be feasible" - notes Dr. Bustelo.
No doubt this finding is a important step in the fight against childhood cancer, and hopefully the design of these specific therapies to slow the growth of tumor cells comes soon.
This study has also had the collaboration of CESIC, the University of Salamanca, the Institut del Mar d'Investigaciones Médiques de Barcelona and the Sant Joan de Deu hospital in Esplugues de Llobregat, thus demonstrating that joint research from different fields is crucial to when approaching the study of this disease.
Little big fighters
Every year, more than 150,000 new cases of cancer are diagnosed in children (aged 0 to 18 years) and 1,400 of them occur in our country.
The medicine advances, and the statistics of the 80s -which reflected a cure of 54% of the cases- rose to 75% in the 90s and currently, according to the figures of the Spanish Society of Pediatric Hemato-Oncology the 5-year survival rate from 0 to 14 years is almost 80%.
Achieving a 100% cure is the main challenge of the scientific community, and step by step, with findings like this that we have shared, we hope this dream will come true in the not too distant future.
Via The New Chronicle
In Babies and More Childhood Cancer
