Malaria could one day help treat cancer, BC scientists say

Scientists testing a malaria vaccine in pregnant women made a surprising discovery that shows promise for treating cancer.

The race to find a cure for one of the world’s most feared diseases comes as forecasts show half of us will develop cancer at a few point in our lives.

The finding comes following a discovery by collaborating University of Copenhagen researchers, who found that a protein produced by malaria attaches itself to a sugar molecule found in the placenta of pregnant women- a molecule that is identical to one found in most cancers.

In the laboratory, his team have created a protein that the malaria parasite uses to adhere to the placenta, and they’ve added a toxin. This resulted in a powerful combination that effectively tracks down cancer cells, gets absorbed, and with the release of toxins inside, causes the cancer cells to die.

“But we’re optimistic because the protein appears to only attach itself to a carbohydrate that is only found in the placenta and in cancer tumours in humans”. This commonality is understandable because both tumours and placentas share a number of characteristics, such as rapid growth and tissue invasion. “When my colleagues discovered how malaria uses VAR2CSA to embed itself in the placenta, we immediately saw its potential to deliver cancer drugs in a precise, controlled way to tumours”.

“There is a few irony that a disease as destructive as malaria might be exploited to treat another dreaded disease”, said Ali Salanti, a professor of immunology and microbiology at the Centre for Medical Parasitology, at University of Copenhagen.

A protein harnessed from malaria could be a groundbreaking new tool in the fight against cancer, suggests new research from the University of British Columbia.

Researchers from the two universities have tested thousands of samples from brain tumors to leukemias and results show that the combination of malaria protein and toxin is able to attack more than 90 percent of all types of tumors.

The toxin is then released inside, triggering a process which kills the cancer cells.

In mice carrying non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the drug was successful in reducing tumours to about a quarter of the size compared to the control group, while in two of the six mice with prostate cancer, the tumours completely disappeared a month after receiving the first dose. The researchers are positive that tests on humans can be conducted in four years.

The approach would be unsuitable for pregnant women, however, because if administered the protein would attach itself to the placenta as normal and the toxin would kill it, in much the same way it mistakes the tumor for the placenta in other subjects.

Scientists noticed the malaria bug also bonded itself to cancer cells. Having worked for publications such as The Santiago Times and The Conversation, he now writes for Gizmag from Melbourne, excited by tech and all forms of innovation, the city’s freaky weather and curried egg sandwiches.

“Scientists have spent decades trying to find biochemical similarities between placenta tissue and cancer, but we just didn’t have the technology to find it”, added Daugaard. “We have seen that three doses can arrest growth in a tumor and even make it shrink”, PhD student Thomas Mandel Clausen elaborates. He has been part of the research project for the last two years.

Over the years scientist have been puzzled by the distinction between the growth of aggressive tumor and the way a placenta grows inside a pregnant woman.

“Expressed in popular terms, the toxin will believe that the placenta is a tumor and kill it, in exactly the same way it will believe that a tumor is a placenta”, explains Salanti.

In collaboration with the scientists behind the discovery, the University of Copenhagen has created a biotech company, VAR2pharmaceuticals to drive the clinical development forward.