UPDATE - Issue 19 - October 2004
Stem cells may hold the key
Stem cells are often in the news, bringing hope for curing conditions such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, heart problems and diabetes and for replacing broken bones, severed nerves and burnt skin.
So what are stem cells? We consist of cells, billions upon billions of them, making up our bones, brain, lung, heart, prostate and every other organ in our body. And within each of our organs a tiny fraction of cells, maybe one in a thousand, are stem cells. Most of our cells only live for a few days or weeks, but the stem cells are very long-lived,perhaps lasting throughout our lives. The stem cells give rise to all the other cells and will try to repair an organ when it is damaged.
| Professor John Masters |
So, how about prostate stem cells? Well, unfortunately, prostate cancer research has not been very good at attracting funds and lags well behind most other types of stem cell research. But progress is beginning to be made, and we and other research teams have grown in the laboratory what we think are stem cells from prostates.
So why should men with prostate cancer be interested in stem cells? We think that stem cells not only hold the key to how cancer develops, they may be the route to effective cancer treatment. And that is because we think cancer usually develops in stem cells.
This stem cell theory of cancer has very important implications for cancer therapy. Treatments for advanced cancer such as hormone therapy and chemotherapy tend to kill more specialised cells. We think that this may be why advanced prostate cancer almost always relapses after a median period of about 18 months of hormone therapy. The hormone therapy kills the more specialised cells that depend on the hormones, but leaves the stem cells untouched to carry on growing and develop further genetic changes that make them resistant to hormone therapy.
So we think that the therapy that is currently available for advanced prostate and other types of cancer may be killing the wrong cells. If we could attack the stem cells and kill them, then there is the possibility that we could turn off the tap that supplies the cancer and cure the disease. It is even possible that using cancer stem cell therapy we could also replace surgery and radiotherapy for early disease with a much gentler medical treatment for prostate cancer. However, all this is just a gleam in the eye of a laboratory scientist and is at least 10 years away from being applied in the clinic.
So how can you help to make it happen?
Firstly, please be generous to cancer research charities, notably the Prostate Research Campaign UK - for every pound spent on treating men with prostate cancer, less than a penny is spent on research in the laboratory, and most of that as a result of your donations.
Secondly, if a scruffy character in a white coat claiming to be a scientist comes to your bedside before your prostate operation asking you to donate some of your tissue, please say yes. Scientists are only trying to find better treatments for cancer and most of them are very dedicated and may need a little bit of your tissue for stem cell or some other type of important