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- Talk
- USA
A Cross-species Personalized Medicine Pipeline Identifies the CRM1 Export Pathway as a Potentially Novel Treatment for Osteosarcoma
Description
In this presentation by Alexander Lazarides, the discussion revolves around the challenges and advancements in treating osteosarcoma, particularly focusing on a case study of a 14-year-old boy diagnosed with the aggressive bone cancer. Lazarides outlines how despite receiving chemotherapy, the young patient's ultimate demise was caused by micrometastases rather than the primary tumor itself. He highlights the stagnation in chemotherapy advancements over the past several decades and the need for improved models and rapid drug discovery methods.
Lazarides proposes a novel comparative oncology approach using canines, which may offer significant insights due to their shared environment with humans and similar treatment responses. The study conducted involved comparing human and dog osteosarcoma samples aiming to identify effective drug targets. Ultimately, the research identified CRM1 as a promising novel target for drug development.
The methodology included deriving tumor samples, generating patient-derived xenografts (PDXs), and conducting extensive drug screens, which suggested that CRM1 inhibitors could significantly limit tumor growth in PDX models. The key takeaway emphasizes the potential of dogs as comparators in drug discovery processes and CRM1's viability as a drug target in developing non-operable treatments for osteosarcoma. The next step involves translating these findings into canine clinical trials to verify the effectiveness of CRM1 inhibitors in treating this challenging disorder.