The fight against cancer is an all-hands-on-deck battle.<\/p>\n
UCF researcher Sudipta Seal joined the fight by collaborating with Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center to provide a key component for a targeted medicine that combats the most common kind of pediatric brain tumor.<\/p>\n
Seal, who is a professor and Chair of the Materials Science and Engineering Department<\/a> within the College of Engineering and Computer Science<\/a>, along with his postdoctoral researcher Elayaraja Kolanthai, created a solution containing therapeutic cerium oxide nanoparticles that acts as a protective vehicle to deliver a combination of cancer therapies through the body and to a patient\u2019s brain. Their work was recently published in the journal Cell Reports<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n A Targeted Approach<\/strong><\/p>\n The intravenous mixture of therapies attacks medulloblastomas \u2013 or tumors \u2013 on all fronts. Ranjan Perera, director of the Center for RNA Biology at Johns Hopkins All Children\u2019s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, and his team developed the medicine that targets a specific part of RNA that \u201creprograms\u201d a region of our DNA to hinder cancer causing genes.<\/p>\n A specific, long non-coding RNA, lncRNA, was identified as a potential bullseye target that accumulates and promotes cancerous growth. Johns Hopkins assembled a sequence of nucleotides \u2013 the building blocks of RNA \u2013 that can bind to the specific parts of the cancer-promoting portion of the RNA and destroy it.<\/p>\n Perera and his team paired the genetic treatment with cisplatin, a common intravenous chemotherapy medication that disrupts cancer cells and prevents them from replication.<\/p>\n The treatment was tested in mice and results showed that it inhibits tumor growth by 40-50%. The intravenous method may have an advantage as an alternative therapy to craniospinal irradiation as it may have less long-term side effects and risk of relapse.<\/p>\n The hope is once this specific genetic expression is identified and this treatment is administered, the malignant tumor growth can be halted and even eliminated in human patients.<\/p>\n