Scientists find new twist on drug screening to treat common childhood cancer
Wednesday, August 18, 2010 - 12:49
in Health & Medicine
A study led by scientists at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) reveals a new method of identifying drugs to treat children suffering from fatal cancers for which an effective treatment has not been found. Rather than developing a new drug from scratch, which is a complicated and time-consuming process, they tried a different approach: in the lab, they tested existing drugs on cancer stem cells from young patients with neuroblastoma, one of the common cancers of infants and children. Cancer stem cells are the very cells that scientists suspect are responsible for relapses. The study is published in the August 18 advance online edition of EMBO Molecular Medicine...