Researchers define mechanism that enables stem cells to track migrating brain t...( ctice. The use of neural stem cells as ...),Health

ctice. The use of neural stem cells as therapeutic delivery vehicles has offered encouraging results in pre-clinical models," said Keith L. Black, MD, director of the Institute and of Cedars-Sinai's Division of Neurosurgery and the Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program. "It is exciting to begin to identify and describe the mechanisms that govern this tracking behavior. This obviously is fundamental to advancing our earlier observations toward successful treatment."

Within the past several years, Cedars-Sinai researchers have published animal and laboratory studies showing that neural stem cells "immature" cells that have the potential to differentiate into any of several types of central nervous system cells have the ability to track glioma cells as they migrate. In recently published work, the researchers genetically engineered tumor-tracking stem cells to secrete interleukin 12, which elicited a local immune response that attacked cancer cells at the tumor site and in the satellites. They also engineered neural stem cells to deliver a protein that causes the death of cancer cells without harming normal cells.

While these and similar studies suggest that cancer-killing immune system components can be piggybacked with neural stem cells to track and attack glioma cells even as they migrate, the mechanisms responsible for this tracking ability have remained a mystery.

Although many of the stem cells transplanted into tumors have demonstrated robust migratory activity and tumor tracking capabilities, a significant number have remained at the injection site. The injections have consisted of stem cells at various levels of differentiation some still "uncommitted" as to the type of cells they would eventually become, some developing into neurons, and some becoming glial cells.

"We hypothesized that the tumor-tracking capacity was likely exhibited by a specific subpopulation of progenitor cells at a particular stage of differentiation," said
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Contact: Sandra Van
sandy@vancommunications.com
1-800-880-2397
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
4-May-2004

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