Leukemia Cells Hide In Fat – Researchers say that leukemia cells can hide in fat tissue to evade chemotherapy, which may explain why obese children with leukemia are more likely to develop chemotherapy resistance and have higher relapse rates.
A previous cancer relapse study found that obese children with leukemia are 50 percent more likely to relapse than lean children, but scientists weren’t sure why.
In this new study, researchers observed that obese mice with leukemia had higher relapse rates than lean mice after they were treated with the first-line chemotherapy drug vincristine.
In the mice that relapsed, leukemia cells were found to be hiding in fat tissue during chemotherapy.
“We were surprised to find leukemia cells in the fat tissue,” lead researcher Dr. Steven D. Mittelman, the fellowship research director with the Division of Endocrinology at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles said in a news release from the American Association for Cancer Research.
He and his colleagues also found that four chemotherapy drugs used in children — vincristine, nilotinib, daunorubicin and dexamethasone — all worked less effectively in culture when fat cells were nearby.
The leukemia cells hide in fat tissue study appears online Sept. 22 in the journal Cancer Research.
Mittelman said further research is needed to determine how body fat affects chemotherapy.
The study findings offer “striking experimental support for the clinical observations that obesity is associated with poor prognosis in multiple cancers,” Dr. David Hockenbery, a member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and a professor of internal medicine at the University of Washington, said in the news release.
And that’s the latest news on leukemia cells hide in fat.
Tags: brown fat, cancer, cancer breakthrough, fat, health, leukemia cells hide in fat, obesity
September 22nd, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Do you have a link to this study anywhere?
September 23rd, 2009 at 7:22 am
Isn’t it amazing what cancer will do?
September 26th, 2009 at 12:40 am
That is interesting. I didn’t know that they could hide in fat tissues.
September 29th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Looks like we’re finally making some progress in cancer research – thank you for this!
September 29th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
sounds like the cancer cells are smarter than we thought…
September 30th, 2009 at 7:44 am
How do the cancer cells get stored amongst the fat cells? Doesn’t the lymphatic system have a role in fat storage?
October 2nd, 2009 at 6:08 pm
that’s just weird!
October 4th, 2009 at 2:43 am
Maybe they out to use that fat-busting cold laser treatment to break up all their excess fat pockets around their stomach and hips!
October 10th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Every bad thing in your body ends up stored in your fat.
Check the news stories about the time back in the Seventies when some idiots in Michigan at a feed warehouse confused the fire retardant PBB with cattle feed and got a ton of PBB into Michigan’s milk supply.
Decades later, doctors can still find PBB in the fat cells of the thousands of people who were exposed to the contaminated milk…
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