- MONDAY, Aug. 11 (HealthDay News) — Learning more about normal cells
that give rise to cancer may hold the key to understanding and treating
cancer, according to Duke University Medical Center researchers who
identified cells linked to a deadly brain cancer.

“Identifying the specific, normal cells that cancer come from can
provide critical insight into how cancers develop. This may help us
develop more rational and effective approaches to treatment,” Robert
Wechsler-Reya, an associate professor of pharmacology and cancer biology,
said in a medical center news release.

In what's believed to be a first, the Duke team had identified two
types of cells in the brain that can give rise to the malignant brain
tumor medulloblastoma. It occurs most commonly in children and is treated
with a combination of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, which cause
severe side effects.

In order to identify the normal cells associated with medulloblastoma,
the Duke researchers and colleagues in Australia created mouse models of
medulloblastoma by turning off the patched gene, an important regulator of
cell growth in the cerebellum. Specifically, they switched off the patched
gene in granule neuron precursors (GNPs), which make one particular type
of neuron, or in stem cells, which can make all the different cell types
in the cerebellum.

When the patched gene was turned off in GNPs, 100 percent of the mice
developed medulloblastoma. When the gene was deleted from stem cells, most
of them went on to form normal cell types within the cerebellum.

The findings provide the first definitive proof that medulloblastoma
can be triggered in GNPs, the researchers said.

“Simply mutating a gene is not enough to cause cancer. The mutation has
to happen in the right cell type at the right time. In the case of
patched, GNPs provide the critical context for tumor formation,”
Wechsler-Reya said.

The study was published in the August issue of the journal Cancer
Cell.

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about cancer.