In a study published in an international journal, scientists at duke university medical center found that treating multiple types of drugs as a chemical may have great potential for treating stomach cancer. In addition to being known to block the growth of cancer cells, the researchers found that a drug called DFMO directly reduces the virulence of helicobacter pylori, an infection that is a major cause of stomach cancer.
Gastric cancer is the third leading cause of cancer death. Researchers further studied how DFMO can prevent gastric cancer. Helicobacter pylori infects the stomach tissue of half the population, but only about 1 percent of those infected develop stomach cancer, and while it is possible to prevent stomach cancer by treating the infection, researchers don't know who to treat.
Researcher Dr Keith says, helicobacter pylori with common human evolution at least 60000 years, and possibly longer, widespread use of antibiotics is used to eliminate the bacteria infections to prevent gastric cancer seems to be difficult to achieve, researchers say, may by reducing bacterial virulence to effectively prevent the occurrence of cancer of the stomach, after when the researchers of helicobacter pylori infection animal model for research found that promote cell growth more compound amine or there is a certain correlation with the incidence of gastric cancer, and the use of DFMO to treat animals or can effectively prevent the occurrence of cancer of the stomach, DFMO inhibits the function of enzymes that are critical to the production of polyamines.
In order to clarify the mechanism of action of DFMO, researchers from DFMO treated or untreated infection animal collection of helicobacter pylori in the body, using in vitro testing means, the researchers assessed the main virulence factors of helicobacter pylori CagA protein activity, the CagA protein can "injection" promote the generation of carcinogenic signaling pathway in gastric epithelial cells. Bacteria from animals treated with DFMO reduced their ability to transport virulence factors to epithelial cells, the researchers said. In vitro and in vivo, DFMO therapy has been shown to induce mutations in the gene encoding CagY in helicobacter pylori, which is part of the translocation mechanism that injects CagA into cells.
In addition, the researchers also found that gastric cancer did not occur in animals infected with helicobacter pylori with CagY mutation. The results of this study support DFMO therapy or other tools to reduce the virulence of the bacteria, so as to achieve effective prevention of gastric cancer. DFMO can inhibit a variety of special enzymatic pathways, and it also produces some "off-target" effects, that is, it promotes the mutation of bacterial genes affecting CagA translocation. Most gastric cancers today are directly related to caga-positive strains, and if drugs are used to interfere with CagA activity, there may be additional benefits.