TOKYO, Japan: Researchers at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) have recently found that applying a topical ointment containing an anti-tumour factor can increase the effectiveness of cancer treatment.
Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) accounts for more than 90 per cent of all occurrences of oral cancer. While chemotherapy and radiation can be used to treat OSCC, many people develop resistance to cisplatin, the main drug used to treat it.
Phuong Xuan Tran, the lead author of the research, and colleagues revealed that treating oral cancer cells with miR-634, a microRNA that targets pro-tumour factors, can increase the effectiveness of treatment with cisplatin.
The team found that miR-634 counteracts some cell-protective processes, such as anti-apoptotic signalling and antioxidant scavenging, activated in cancer cells resistant to cisplatin and suggested increasing the amount of this small molecule in cells could increase their sensitivity to this drug.
They treated two different OSCC cell lines with both the miRNA and the drug to test whether miR-634 can help increase tumour sensitivity to cisplatin and how many cells survived.
The results showed that miR-634 effectively increased cisplatin-induced cytotoxicity and overcame cisplatin resistance in OSCC cells, increasing tumour cell killing."
The treatment combination was subsequently tried in mice with experimental tumours to corroborate the findings. The tumours reduced swiftly when the mice were treated with cisplatin, and a miR-634 ointment was administered to the tumours.
The study 'Potential for reversing miR-634-mediated cytoprotective processes to improve efficacy of chemotherapy against oral squamous cell carcinoma' has recently been published in Molecular Therapy - Oncolytics.
