The International Mesothelioma Dr. Bryan Burt, Program's Novel Therapeutics Laboratory at Boston’s Brigham and Women's Hospital recently published a paper entitled “Circulated and tumor-infiltrating myeloid cells predict survival in human pleural mesothelioma in the medical journal Cancer. The paper contends that certain types of white blood cells may hold clues as to a new treatment target for mesothelioma cancer.
Pleural mesothelioma is a rare cancer of the protective lining of the lungs that is caused exclusively by prolonged exposure to toxic asbestos fibers. Mesothelioma is terminal because it is often detected too late for treatment to be anything other than palliative, and cancer researchers still have not found a reliable method to keep it from spreading or recurring.
However, research has revealed that mesothelioma tumors produce an abundance of myeloid cell stimulating factors that cause the body to produce extra white blood cells. Dr. Burt’s team of researchers believes that by monitoring the levels of monocytes and macrophages, they can determine which patients are more likely to do well when treated for mesothelioma. They also believe that further research into these white blood cells help develop new immune system targeted mesothelioma treatments.
The researchers reviewed 667 mesothelioma cases in which cytoreductive surgery at Brigham & Women’s between 1989 and 2009 and found that macrophages comprised an average of 27% of the patient’s tumor area. Additionally, patients with the rarer non-epithelial types of mesothelioma not only had shorter life expectancies, but they were found to have significantly higher levels of monocytes. Overall, the higher the monocyte count, the lower the chance of survival.
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