{"id":1126,"date":"2015-12-18T11:48:31","date_gmt":"2015-12-18T11:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/biosciences\/?p=1126"},"modified":"2015-12-18T11:48:31","modified_gmt":"2015-12-18T11:48:31","slug":"research-offers-potential-new-treatment-for-childrens-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/biosciences\/2015\/12\/18\/research-offers-potential-new-treatment-for-childrens-cancer\/","title":{"rendered":"Research offers potential new treatment for children’s cancer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"back<\/a>The team, including Professor Martin Michaelis<\/span><\/u><\/a> and Dr Mark Wass <\/span><\/u><\/a>at Kent\u2019s School of Biosciences<\/span><\/u><\/a>, found that flubendazole \u2013 a drug used against parasitic worms \u2013 has potential for the treatment of neuroblastoma, a cancer of the peripheral nervous system which affects children.<\/p>\n

Tests on 461 cancer cell lines revealed that neuroblastoma \u2013 the most common solid cancer occurring outside the brain in children and a major cause of death during infancy \u2013 was highly sensitive to flubendazole.<\/p>\n

Flubendazole was also found to reduce the viability of five primary neuroblastoma samples in concentrations thought to be achievable in humans. It inhibited vessel formation and neuroblastoma tumour growth in a tumour model in fertilised chicken eggs.<\/p>\n

Acquired resistance to various anti-cancer drugs is a major problem in high-risk neuroblastoma. The researchers found that 119 cell lines from a panel of 140 neuroblastoma cell lines with acquired resistance to various anti-cancer drugs were sensitive to flubendazole in low concentrations.<\/p>\n

Professor Michaelis and the team concluded that flubendazole represents a viable potential treatment option for neuroblastoma. It will now be subject to further research.<\/p>\n

The research, entitled Identification of flubendazole as potential anti-neuroblastoma compound in a large cell line screen <\/i><\/span><\/u><\/a>, <\/em>was conducted by Martin Michaelis, Professor of Molecular Medicine, and Mark Wass, Senior Lecturer in Computational Biology, at the University of Kent; 10 colleagues from the Goethe-University,\u00a0 Frankfurt am Main, and eight from other German institutions. It was published in Scientific Reports <\/i><\/span><\/u><\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n