Cancer stem cells are responsible for failure of metastatic stage 4 colon cancer treatment. “We developed a new WNT pathway inhibitor medication PRI-724. We used it to treat colon cancer in humans for the first time.” “We can kill colon cancer stem cells with chemotherapy.”

Colon cancer stem cells treatment. PRI-724 chemotherapy. Colorectal cancer stem cells are known as tumor initiating cells. Leading German-American colorectal cancer oncologist discusses colon cancer stem cells (tumor initiating cells). Chemotherapy eventually fails because colorectal cancer stem cells regenerate and escape targeted chemotherapy treatment. New chemotherapy medication PRI-724 works to inhibit proliferation part of WNT signaling pathway. Cancer stem cells have to be differentiated and then killed by chemotherapy to unroot cancer completely. Treatment of colorectal cancer by stem cell differentiating medications and chemotherapy will succeed to cure more advanced colorectal cancer patients. Colorectal cancer targeted stem cell chemotherapy options. Advanced stage 4 colon cancer stem cell treatment by targeted chemotherapy. Medical second opinion confirms colorectal cancer diagnosis at genetic level. Medical second opinion also confirms colon cancer cure is possible in metastatic colon cancer. Best precision medicine stem cell-targeting treatment for advanced stage 4 colon cancer by PRI-724. Medical second opinion helps to select a personalized medicine targeted stem cell treatment for stage 4 colorectal cancer with liver or lung metastases. Get medical second opinion on advanced colorectal cancer. Be confident that your precision medicine treatment is the best. Best colorectal cancer treatment by new WNT inhibitor PRI-724 to differentiate tumor initiating cells of colorectal cancer. Video interview with leading expert in metastatic colorectal cancer treatment from California. Colon cancer stem cell treatment. PRI 724 to treat colorectal cancer. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. You have developed a metastatic colon cancer treatment medication this is in clinical trials now. This colon cancer therapy is called PRI-724. It's a very exciting colorectal cancer therapy medication that targets a particular molecular pathway, the WNT and beta-catenin. You worked with Dr. Michael Kahn in the Comprehensive Cancer Center. You developed a stage 4 colon cancer treatment medication. Can you tell us about this colon cancer medication? What this new colon cancer therapy might bring to the patients in the future? Dr. Heinz-Josef Lenz, MD (Colorectal Cancer Expert, California). It's very important to know that we cannot cure colon cancer with chemotherapy alone. Why is that? I usually use the example of a tree. This analogy helps to understand why our chemotherapy ultimately fails. It helps to understand why we need in patients with stage 4 colorectal cancer liver metastases surgery to cure the patient. The reason is this. We start chemotherapy in stage 4 colorectal cancer patient with liver metastases.Initial success rates are very high, response rate of 60% to 70%. But if the metastatic stage 4 colon cancer tumor starts growing again. We need to switch chemotherapy. Colon cancer tumor response rate goes down to 10% or 20%. In third line of metastatic stage 4 colon cancer treatment the response rate falls to 2%. Why? Are the treatments just weaker? Or what happened to the colon cancer tumor?, I think what's happening is like when you have a tree. You want to cut the tree down. This is the analogy. Sometimes we give metastatic stage 4 colon cancer patient chemotherapy. We are able to remove leaves from the tree. Then we surgically remove the metastatic stage 4 colon cancer tumors in the liver. It's like we are cutting branches of the tree. Then we remove primary colon cancer tumor. Maybe it's like cutting the the stem of a tree. But the tree always grows back. Metastatic stage 4 colon cancer tumor often returns. Dr. Heinz-Josef Lenz, MD (Colorectal Cancer Expert, California). How can we cure colon cancer when we are only able to cut branches from the colon cancer “tree"? We cannot unroot the tree. How do we unroot the “cancer tree”? Well, the roots of colon cancer and other cancers are the colon cancer stem cells. Cancer stem cells are resistant to any chemotherapy treatments that we have for colon cancer patient. How can we target cancer stem cells? We cannot kill cancer stem cells. We can only stimulate cancer stem cells. So they differentiate out. Then we can kill differentiated cancer stem cells with chemotherapy. We developed and we used PRI-724 medication candidate for the first time in the clinic. We were able to show that we can eliminate colon cancer stem cells in pre-clinical colon cancer models. Our success led to the first-in-human, proof-of-principal clinical trial. We monitored the efficacy of PRI 724 by using circulating colon cancer tumor cells. Dr. Heinz-Josef Lenz, MD (Colorectal Cancer Expert, California). We knew that the PRI-724 worked. We know what happens to PRI-724 molecules in the body. We monitored the cancer stem cell markers. I think for the future we need colon cancer medications that target the underlying roots of the colon cancer. These new medications will first differentiate colon cancer stem cells. Then we can kill colon cancer stem cells with chemotherapy. I think that is how we will be able in the future to cure stage 4 colon cancer. We will cure colon cancer when we find the correct medications. They can actually differentiate cancer stem cells and kill them. we know that from other cancers that retinoic acid differentiates out leukemia cells. Then you can kill them, You can cure the cancer patient. Probably it's not as simple in colon cancer and other cancers. But I think that is the correct approach to treat metastatic stage 4 colon cancer. PRI-724 was one of the first medications to target WNT signaling. WNT gene is altered in over 95% of colon cancer tumors. WNT is an extremely interesting molecular pathway. Because Wnt is the first pathway this is activated in a developing life. When you have four cells, the pathway this activates first is Wnt. Because at this point you already need to know that you have to grow. But you already need to know what cells will develop into legs, into organs. Cells of growing human body need to know their directions. It's a process of differentiation and proliferation. That has been the challenge in the past. You cannot just inhibit Wnt pathway altogether. Inhibiting both proliferation and differentiation would be too toxic. Dr. Heinz-Josef Lenz, MD (Colorectal Cancer Expert, California). You need to inhibit the proliferation part of Wnt pathway. But you need to stimulate the differentiation part of wnt pathway. Then you have a chance of curing colon cancer. I think that Wnt is a key pathway in the future to develop new colon cancer treatment medications. That's the method we can use to cure stage 4 metastatic colon cancer in the future. Colon cancer stem cells cause therapy failure. Tumor-initiating cells. Stage 4 metastatic colon cancer treatment WNT pathway inhibitor PRI-724 is effective.