Researchers at Purdue University are looking for ways to circumvent invasive and lengthy bladder cancer treatments. In their recent article, they mobilized the anthrax toxin. Because bladder cancers overexpress epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), the researchers used it as a target. Their findings showed that in as few as 3 minutes, the EGFR-targeted anthrax could send human, mouse, and canine bladder cancer cells into apoptosis.
The toxin was able to eliminate cells taken from a human tumor and to reduce tumor size in dogs that had failed or were not eligible for other treatments. The toxin reduced treatment time from hours to minutes, and the authors suggest that it could be used for other types of cancers, like lung and skin.
There were no toxic effects when tumor-free dogs and mice were exposed to the anthrax treatment, but we wouldn’t cover this research until it was in advanced clinical trials. This research on its own doesn’t inform how busy oncologists should treat the bladder cancer patients they are seeing today.
From Medscape
