Source: Radio New Zealand
In this living zebrafish larva, the lymphatic vessels are fluorescently labelled red, while blood vessels are green, allowing scientists to visualise vessel growth. SUPPLIED
The larva of a stripey fish could be the key to preventing a chronic and painful swelling condition that’s a common side effect of some breast cancer treatment.
Lymphoedema usually affected the arms or legs and could be caused by cancer treatments that remove or damage the lymph nodes. There was currently no cure.
The condition could be congenital or caused by an injury, but it mostly occurred as an unintended consequence following breast-cancer treatment.
Auckland University scientists discovered a molecule in zebrafish larva that offered hope of eventually treating or preventing the condition.
Lead researcher Dr Jonathan Astin, told Checkpoint, the larva of zebrafish were often used to answer scientific questions as the larva was almost completely transparent, making it easy to fluorescently label any organ system.
Astin said the way a human embryo developed was initially almost identical to a fish embryo – so the hope was what was discovered using zebrafish could be directly translated into understanding human development and disease.
In Astin’s lab, the lympahtics of the fish were tagged to help understand how lymphatics form and how lymphatic diseases could be treated.
The scientists discovered a growth-promoting molecule, known as ‘insulin-like growth factor’, or IGF, accelerated the growth of lymphatic vessels in zebrafish, so it had the potential to repair damaged vessels.
“What we’ve done subsequently is grown human lymphatics in a dish and put this human IGF on and that has been able to stimulate human lymphatic growth,” Astin said.
“Finding the molecule in fish allowed us to identify it might be therapeutic and find the human version.”
Astin said lymphoedema was often seen in breast cancer patients, with some estimates that around 20 percent of patients who had lymph nodes removed as part of breast cancer treatment having lymphoedema develop in one of their arms.
The condition was very difficult to cure once a person had it, Aston said, because the fluid build up caused tissue damage which could be hard to reverse, but the hope was it could be prevented.
“The plan would really be prevent it form occurring in the first place, so we hope by identifying this new IGF, it may be part of a treatment cocktail where we might be able to provide these lymphatic stimulating growth factors to patients who have lymph nodes removed in order to prevent the onset or the incidents of lymphoedema.”
Any possible treatment would still be many years off, Astin said, as work was still being done to understand whether it could stimulate repair and the it would need to be tested for safety.
“But this is the first new lymphatic growth factor we’ve identified in many years.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
