16 Nov 2016
The search for a cure for mesothelioma is in no way limited to the shores of the United States. The toxic impact of asbestos is felt internationally, with the highest incidence of malignant mesothelioma per capita being found in Australia, where over 700 new cases are diagnosed each year. According to the country’s Asbestos Diseases Research Institute (ADRI) more than 10,000 Australians have died of mesothelioma since the early 1980s and the organization expects another 25,000 to be lost over the next forty years. But ADRI researchers have teamed up with a New Zealand-born associate professor at the University of Sydney Medical School, Dr. Glen Reid, along with a Sydney-based biotech company called EnGelIC to research the way that the disease responds to chemotherapeutic drugs and find a better solution. What they’ve come up with is a “futuristic new drug delivery system that relies on nanotechnology and guiding antibodies” The bottom line – they’ve found that it works.
According to Dr. Reid, the group has been treating mesothelioma tumors with antibody-guided minicells containing micro RNAs that work like a Trojan Horse. “We have found an amazing inhibition of tumor growth. The results were far in excess of what we have seen with other experimental therapies in this model, and we are very excited about it.” He goes on to explain, “A nano cell is a delivery vehicle. You can package basically anything in there that you like, so a chemotherapy drug, or in our case a mini-gene – and then it’s injected into the body.”
The group is still in the midst of its research, but its excitement is based in large part on the results they have seen in a single patient, 51-year old Bradley Selmon, who was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2013. After failing to respond to chemotherapy, he elected to join Dr. Reid’s clinical trial and in a two-month period his tumor has been virtually eliminated. He is one of only ten patients in the phase one trial and is the only one to respond so well, so the researchers are working to remind people that it is important to remain measured in their enthusiasm and response. Still, according to Selmon’s oncologist, Dr. Steven Kao of the Chris O’Brien Lifehouse cancer center in Sydney, the treatment “has the potential for a paradigm shift in the management of other treatment resistant tumors.”