One of the most common soft-tissue cancers in children mostly affects very young children, and is often deadly if it comes back after treatment.
Embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma (ERMS) is a cancer of skeletal muscle that has a high five-year survival rate (>70%) with early diagnosis and treatment. But if the cancer recurs, it responds poorly. Even for survivors, treatment often causes health problems or other cancers later in life.
How ERMS tumors relapse is the central question driving the research of Myron Ignatius, recruited from Harvard to join the Department of Molecular Medicine and Greehey Children’s Cancer Research Institute at The University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio. His research is supported by a First-Time Tenure Track Award from CPRIT.
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One of the most common soft-tissue cancers in children mostly affects very young children, and is often deadly if it comes back after treatment.
Embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma (ERMS) is a cancer of skeletal muscle that has a high five-year survival rate (>70%) with early diagnosis and treatment. But if the cancer recurs, it responds poorly. Even for survivors, treatment often causes health problems or other cancers later in life.
How ERMS tumors relapse is the central question driving the research of Myron Ignatius, recruited from Harvard to join the Department of Molecular Medicine and Greehey Children’s Cancer Research Institute at The University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio. His research is supported by a First-Time Tenure Track Award from CPRIT.
ERMS is a cancer that resembles developing muscle cells that are unable to form characteristic muscle fibers. It’s most likely to affect children in their first five years of life.
Ignatius is the first researcher in South Texas to use the common aquarium Zebrafish as a model for human cancers. Zebrafish grow muscle tumors that mimic human ones, and are smaller and take up less space than other animals used for cancer research. They’re also translucent, so tumors can be viewed in a live fish under a microscope.
Ignatius has found that not all cancer cells inside an ERMS tumor are alike, and certain cell types are more dangerous than others. His research was the first to show that some of the tumor cells behave more like stem cells, which are believed to reform the tumor when it relapses. Other cell types help tumors metastasize, or spread.
Using Zebrafish, Ignatius found that some differentiated tumor cells are able to turn back into stem cells. This process, known as de-differentiation, normally doesn’t happen in muscle cells, but is a property that tumor cells gain. This phenomenon will likely be found in many other types of tumors, Ignatius says.
To link his findings to human disease, Ignatius performed experiments in mice, and also found correlations in data from human patients. Ignatius hopes to find a way to shut down de-differentiation to prevent ERMS cancers from coming back.
“My goal is to find better treatments for these cancers,” he says, “and to discover ones that are less toxic.”
Ignatius also participates in CPRIT-funded initiatives to bank tumors from children with cancer, as well as study cancer biology by sequencing the DNA from tumors. From this, he hopes to understand if there are differences in the incidence or types of childhood cancers in children of Hispanic descent.
Ignatius chose to come to Texas because he felt it was the place where he could best learn and grow as a scientist. He adds that UTHealth San Antonio is one of only three places in the U.S. that tests cancer drugs at the preclinical stage in mice, which means if he finds something that might work, it can make it into patients that much faster.
Ignatius studied at St. Xavier’s College in Bombay and Maharaja Sayarjirao University, both in India, before receiving his Ph.D. from Ohio State University. He was a postdoctoral research fellow in cancer and stem cell biology, and instructor in pathology, at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital before coming to San Antonio in 2016.
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