A Cat in the Hat reference? For Fighting Cancer? Good.

In battling cancer it doesn't matter how you get to therapies

Most people’s minds when they hear the three words, St Jude Children’s go to the hospital and its commendable (mostly) mission to help children in ways that are nearly free of costs.

But there is a Research Hospital also part of the St. Jude family, and scientists there have made an exciting discovery that could lead to a new way of treating cancer.

I stole some of this next graph from the STAT newsletter, because… Well, the title gives it away.

Some cancer tumors are like the mayhem in “Cat in the Hat,” they are enabled by parental absence. They grow because the genes that are meant to provide discipline, guiding the activity of other genes or self-destructing a cell whose DNA is too damaged, are broken or missing.

The parental absence in the above example can also be expressed as the lack of brakes. Much like brakes control a vehicle's speed, tumor suppressor genes apply a brake to cellular proliferation, preventing cells from dividing too rapidly. However, if these supressor genes undergo damaging mutations that impair their function, the brake fails, allowing cells to multiply unchecked - the hallmark of cancer. Normally it’s treated by attacking the body and the cancer. Like with chemotherapy. Icky stuff.

Rhabdoid tumors are an aggressive type of this cancer. It is caused by the loss of the suppressor protein SMARCB1) that normally suppresses tumor growth. But in this case, the researchers discovered that when they removed a second protein (DCAF5) from rhabdoid cancer cells that were already missing the SMARCB1 protein, the cancer cells to revert back towards a more normal, non-cancerous state.

It’s good to avoid chemotherapy whenever possible. It’s good to make discoveries. Thus treatment routes, even the unexpected ones like removing related proteins, are very good and hopefully are the leading edge of similar new therapies that reverse the cancerous state without the harsh side effects of chemotherapy or radiation.

"We have demonstrated a beautiful proof of principle, and we hope we may have opened the door to thinking about new ways to approach targeting at least some of these cancers by reversing, instead of killing, cancer." said Dr. Charles W.M. Roberts, MD, PhD, Executive Vice President and Director of St. Jude Comprehensive Cancer Center.