Researchers at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Ohio State University have figured out a way to use a firefly gene to let them see how effective a new drug therapy is against some forms of cancer.
In a statement on Wednesday, scientists said there hasn't been any widely effective therapy for ATLL, adult T-cell lymphoma and leukemia. ATTL is a form of cancer where it is particularly hard to gauge the disease's progress, and where the patients' prognosis is generally poor.
ATLL patient's tumors "secrete proteins that also cause the bones in these patients to weaken and resorb," said Thomas Rosol, professor of veterinary biosciences and dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Ohio State University. "When that happens, the amount of calcium in the blood can build up to toxic levels."
He said they need to find a way to "stop the resorption of bone and the release of calcium that the cancer causes."
They used genetically altered cells placed in mice to study how the cancer responds to drug therapies. They used a gene from the firefly to make the tumor cells they are studying glow.
"We just measured the light that we could see coming out of the animal - the more light, the more tumor growth; the less light, less tumor," Rosol said.
The study was published in the online edition of the journal Cancer Research.
