Cancer

Medical Background

Cancer is basically out-of-control cell division and growth that destroys surrounding tissue and organs. Cancer often turns into a tumor. Some forms, like leukemia, affect the blood and blood-forming organs and circulate through other tissues where they grow. Cancer cells often develop because of damage to the genetic material in a person’s cells. This damage can be inherited or caused by exposure to something in the environment, like smoking or hazardous chemicals.

Different types of cancer can behave very differently. For example, lung cancer and breast cancer grow at different rates and respond to different treatments. That is why people with cancer need treatments that are aimed at their particular kind of cancer. Major types of treatment for cancer include surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and stem cell therapies, such as bone marrow transplants.

The use of bone marrow transplants to treat leukemia, pioneered in the 1970s, was the first major stem cell therapy breakthrough. Bone marrow transplants are now being used to treat other types of cancer, such as breast tumors and ovarian cancer. In fact, various stem cell therapies are playing an increasingly important role in treating cancer and in helping to regenerate cells and tissues that are damaged by chemotherapy and radiation treatments for cancer.

Human and Social Costs

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S. and in Missouri. Although much progress has been made in treating cancer and survival rates have increased, cancer still kills more than 550,000 Americans and over 12,000 Missourians every year.

More than one million people are diagnosed with cancer each year and anyone can get cancer at any age. However, about 77% of all cancers are diagnosed in people age 55 and older. Nearly half of all men and a little over one-third of all women in the U.S. will develop cancer during their lifetimes.

The Missouri Department of Health estimates that some form of cancer will affect a member of approximately three out of every four Missouri families.

The direct and indirect financial costs of cancer are high. In 2002, the National Institutes of Health estimated that the annual costs of cancer in the U.S. exceeded $189 billion. These costs included $64 billion in direct health expenditures, $16 billion in lost productivity due to illness, and $109 billion in lost productivity due to premature deaths.

The Potential for Stem Cell Cures

Bone marrow transplants which are essentially transplants of adult blood-forming stem cells found in bone marrow have been used for decades to save the lives of patients suffering from leukemia and other blood-related cancers. Transplants of blood-forming stem cells are also being used to help replenish patients’ immune systems following cancer treatments involving chemotherapy and radiation. In recent years, some of the notable cutting edge research regarding blood-forming stem cells has been conducted at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City.

Although adult stem cells have provided treatments for some types of cancer and other diseases, the new frontier in stem cell research involves early, or “embryonic,” stem cells (ES cells). Unlike adult stem cells, ES cells have the potential to turn into and regenerate any type of cell or tissue in the human body. As a result, ES cells could provide cures for many currently incurable or common diseases and injuries that cannot be cured with adult stem cells, or more effective treatments than adult stem cells may provide.

There are two basic sources of ES cells for such potential therapies. One source is the leftover embryos at fertility clinics that would otherwise be discarded and destroyed. ES cells can also be produced with Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT), a process that uses a patient’s own cells and an unfertilized human egg to make ES cells. SCNT has the added advantage of producing ES cells that will automatically match the patient’s genetic makeup. As a result, SCNT avoids the need to find a genetically matching donor and the problem of immune system rejection, two limitations associated with donated adult and ES cells.

A key limitation of donated bone marrow transplants is the need to find a genetically compatible donor. If the donated cells are not a good genetic match with the patient, they will be rejected by the patient’s immune system. Unfortunately, about 70% of patients who need bone marrow transplants are unable to find a compatible donor. SCNT could help address this problem by using a patient’s own cells to produce blood-forming stem cells that will be accepted by the patient’s immune system.

SCNT has also given medical researchers an important new tool for studying the development of different types of cancer cells in a laboratory setting. This use of SCNT provides a new way to test the safety and effectiveness of new chemotherapy drugs or other treatments. It can also help researchers determine the cellular changes that cause various cancers, and possibly point the way to reversing those changes.

The consensus of the medical and patient community is that all types of stem cell research should be pursued in the effort to find cures for cancer and other diseases, and that ES cells can play an important role in this effort.

That’s why ES cell research is strongly supported by the overwhelming majority of medical researchers; medical organizations like the American Medical Association; and disease and patient advocacy groups like the American Association for Cancer Research, Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation, Prostate Cancer Foundation, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Friends of Cancer Research, National Prostate Cancer Coalition and Women’s Cancer Research Fund.