Promising Early Results for Rare Childhood Brain Cancer Drug

It’s still early in the process, but researchers say a new drug being developed appears to dramatically slow the growth of a rare and deadly form of childhood brain cancer.

The drug, called 3-BrOP, is being developed by scientists at the Children’s Cancer Hospital at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In testing using laboratory mice, the drug was found to reduce the growth of the cancer, neuroblastoma, by as much as 75 percent.

In the study, human neuroblastoma cells were transplanted into mice and injected with 3-BrOP, a glycolysis inhibitor that starves cancer cells of energy by stopping the flow of glucose, which is the main energy source for the cells, researchers said.

“We found that neuroblastoma cells, unlike healthy cells, are highly dependent on glycolysis for energy instead of more efficient means of energy production,” the research team said in a statement. “Glycolysis is a process that breaks down sugar for energy, so by blocking that process with 3-BrOP, we are able to keep the tumors from producing energy, and this disrupts their ability to grow.”

The group’s findings on the use of 3-BrOP to treat neuroblastoma cancer were presented this week to the annual meeting of the American Society of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology.

About 650 new cases of neuroblastoma are diagnosed in the United States each year, with about half of those appearing in children younger than two years old. Only about 10 percent of cases occur in people over age five. Neuroblastoma accounts for about 10 percent of all childhood cancers and 15 percent of all cancer deaths in children.

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