Drosophila – Cancer

ambience: drosophila, fruit flies
The sounds of fruit flies in a lab. It turns out that fruit flies’ genes are in many ways similar to humans, and scientists are using them to test how effective different forms of cancer treatment are. I’m JIm Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

Markstein : We recently published a paper describing a chemical screen, where we had flies eat almost all of the readily available chemotherapy drugs that are used in a clinic today.

Michelle Markstein is an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

Markstein: We found that several of them have an effect they shrink the tumors that we produced in flies, using human genes. So that helps validate our model showing the clinical relevance. And we also got an unexpected result, where we saw that some chemotherapy drugs that could shrink tumors in the fly had the opposite effect on the normal STEM cells in the fly. Instead of hurting those cells, they actually encouraged those cells to overgrow. This is a bit of a concern because it suggests that some chemotherapy drugs will shrink tumors in one part of the organism and then encourage new tumors to form in another part of the organism.
In response to this paper, I’ve gotten several emails and phone calls from cancer patients who are concerned about the chemotherapy that they are using. So I think it’s really important to say the chemotherapy that is used in a clinic today are the best drugs we have available. We give them to people because they work. But every drug can work better. So what we are finding in the fly is there is sometimes a side effect that can be improved upon. Now that we are understanding the molecular basis of that side effect, we can either add new drugs that will help suppress that, or we can also find additional new drugs.

Pulse of the Planet is made possible in part by Virginia Tech, inventing the future through a hands-on approach to education and research.

Drosophila - Cancer

Using fruit fly genes to test different forms of cancer treatment.

Air Date:02/03/2017

Scientist:

Transcript:

Drosophila - Cancer

ambience: drosophila, fruit flies
The sounds of fruit flies in a lab. It turns out that fruit flies' genes are in many ways similar to humans, and scientists are using them to test how effective different forms of cancer treatment are. I'm JIm Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

Markstein : We recently published a paper describing a chemical screen, where we had flies eat almost all of the readily available chemotherapy drugs that are used in a clinic today.

Michelle Markstein is an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

Markstein: We found that several of them have an effect they shrink the tumors that we produced in flies, using human genes. So that helps validate our model showing the clinical relevance. And we also got an unexpected result, where we saw that some chemotherapy drugs that could shrink tumors in the fly had the opposite effect on the normal STEM cells in the fly. Instead of hurting those cells, they actually encouraged those cells to overgrow. This is a bit of a concern because it suggests that some chemotherapy drugs will shrink tumors in one part of the organism and then encourage new tumors to form in another part of the organism.
In response to this paper, I've gotten several emails and phone calls from cancer patients who are concerned about the chemotherapy that they are using. So I think it's really important to say the chemotherapy that is used in a clinic today are the best drugs we have available. We give them to people because they work. But every drug can work better. So what we are finding in the fly is there is sometimes a side effect that can be improved upon. Now that we are understanding the molecular basis of that side effect, we can either add new drugs that will help suppress that, or we can also find additional new drugs.

Pulse of the Planet is made possible in part by Virginia Tech, inventing the future through a hands-on approach to education and research.