Conventionally, the therapeutic effects of radiotherapy on cancer have been evaluated using predictive models developed based on data obtained from basic cell experiments.However, since these prediction models are based on the assumption that cancer tissue is a homogeneous cell population, in reality, treatment effects cannot be reproduced in clinically treated cancer tissue composed of heterogeneous cell populations. It is possible.
In order to solve this problem, Assistant Professor Ryo Saga of the Graduate School of Health Sciences, Hirosaki University and Researcher Yusuke Matsutani of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency's Nuclear Science and Engineering Research Center have discovered that even in heterogeneous cell populations, highly resistant to radiation Focusing on cancer stem cells that show , we developed a new prediction model that takes into account the presence of cancer stem cells that exist in about 8% of cancer tissues.This has made it possible to "bridge basic research and clinical research," which has been desired, and succeeded in reproducing the therapeutic effects of patients from cell experimental data for the first time in the world.
After verifying the usefulness of the developed model by analyzing the therapeutic effects of lung cancer (non-small cell cancer), it was found that the model parameters were used to reproduce the measured values of the lung cancer cell-killing effect in the basic cell experiments in the prediction model. succeeded in.At the same time, we succeeded in reproducing clinical lung cancer data by estimating Tumor Control Probability (TCP), an index of clinical therapeutic efficacy, using the same model parameters.In other words, by using a model that considers cancer stem cells, it was possible to simultaneously reproduce the cancer cell-killing effect obtained in cell experiments and patient treatment outcomes.
In the future, this model is expected to be applied to cancer tissues other than lung cancer, and the application of this technology will lead to the development of custom-made treatments for patients with different percentages of cancer stem cells. It is expected.
