The National Health Research Institutes (NHRI) yesterday announced a potential breakthrough in the treatment of ovarian cancer — the discovery of a steroid medication that may help inhibit metastasis of the cancer and/or its recurrence.
The discovery was made during a three year study conducted by researchers from NHRI’s Institute of Molecular and Genomic Medicine and two gynecologists at Taipei Veterans General Hospital.
“After subjecting the metastasized ovarian cancer cell line [SKOV-I6iv] and its parental line [SKOV-3] to miRNA array analysis, we found that the expression of microRNA-708 was significantly lower in SKOV-I6iv cells than in SKOV-3 cells,” institute director Wang Lu-hai (王陸海) told a news conference in Taipei.
Wang also serves as the corresponding author for the research.
In analyzing ovarian tumor specimens obtained from the hospital, the researchers discovered noticeably lower miR-708 expression in patients whose cancer cells had reached an advanced stage or spread than in those whose ovarian tissues were normal or whose cancer was still in the early stages, Wang said.
Further analysis showed that even among end-stage patients, those with high microRNA-708 had a higher survival rate than those with low microRNA-708 expression, Wang said.
“A subsequent mouse experiment discovered that microRNA-708 can help inhibit cancer metastasis and those injected with dexamethasone — a synthetic glucocorticoid compound with anti-inflammatory activities — for a month saw microRNA-708 expression increase nearly seven-fold,” he said.
The research team then identified microRNA-708’s downstream regulator in ovarian cancer metastasis as Rap1B protein, the suppression of which plays an important role in curbing ovarian cancer cell migration/invasion and metastasis, Wang said.
The study indicates that the use of glucocorticoids, such as dexamethasone, could “inhibit ovarian cancer metastasis,” he said.
The team’s next step is to determine when and how many doses of glucocorticoid need to be administered to achieve the highest efficacy, Wang said.
The research is expected to enter human clinical trial stage in two years, he said.
The study, “Glucocorticoids mediate induction of microRNA-708to suppress ovarian cancer metastasis through targeting Rap1B,” was published in the online journal Nature Communications on Jan. 8.
Gynecologist Chao Kuan-chong (趙灌中) said while the incidence rate of ovarian cancer in Taiwan is relatively low at 10.8 cases per 100,000 population, the five-year survival rate for end-stage sufferers is less than 50 percent even with treatment.
“That is partly because of the cancer’s asymptomatic nature and the currently insufficient screening methods to catch the disease at an early stage,” Chao said.
Chao said nearly 70 percent of ovarian cancer patients were diagnosed at a late stage and most of them suffered from drug resistance or recurrence within three years after a combined treatment of surgery and chemotherapy.
“It will be a tremendous ovarian cancer drug breakthrough If glucocorticoid proves to be effective in curbing cancer cell migration,” Chao said.
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