Daniel E Spratt, Chairman and Professor of Radiation Oncology at University Hospitals (UH) Seidman Cancer Center and Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), shared a post on X about a paper by András Piffkó et al. published in Nature:
“X-torial: It seems the biomedical field needs some help in understanding the Nature paper on RT induced amphiregulin effects in cancer, recently published.
The authors showed RT reduces metastatic burden in #, even when AREG can enlarge existing lesions.
In the Lewis lung carcinoma (LLC) model (not humans), a single 20 Gy to the primary flank tumor decreased # of lung mets!
What increased was the mean size of established micromets – not the new seeding of mets from RT.
They showed that when RT achieves effective local control, distant lesions shrink rather than grow.
Effectively dosed RT – local + distant lesions shrink rather than grow.
In the EO771‑LMB breast model, 20 Gy suppressed both primary and lung mets; only low dose (5 Gy) was associated with growth.
Earlier RT use reduces both the number and size of mets.
RT to smaller tumors earlier (day 8) reduced the number and their size.
Later RT to larger tumors (day 20) was associated with higher systemic AREG and larger mets…
Give RT early!
The authors show an exciting drugable target that may further add to the already mentioned benefits shown from RT to the primary tumor and extend benefit further to mets.
EGFR TKI + anti‑AREG + RT and anti‑CD47 + anti‑AREG + RT yielded synergistic tumor control and smaller metastases.
The paper is well done, but please keep this in context:
- biopsy gene-expression data is from 11 patients
- PMBC analysis is from 15 patients
- most data is from two syngeneic mouse models
- data was solely from single fx RT (remains uncommon clinically)
- trials included immunotherapy and multisite SBRT, which captures a tiny sliver of when we use SBRT
We have thousands of patients from clinical studies showing benefit of RT to the primary and/or mets, and largely this work supports the clinical observation that RT improves local and systemic control.
So feel free to share this with the next person who reads the title of biomedical research paper and fails completely to read and understand what was actually shown.
Don’t be one of the people who have already posted misinformation about this study… don’t let everything be a nail.”
Title: Radiation-induced amphiregulin drives tumour metastasis
Authors: András Piffkó, Kaiting Yang, Arpit Panda, Janna Heide, Krystyna Tesak, Chuangyu Wen, Katarzyna Zawieracz, Liangliang Wang, Emile Z. Naccasha, Jason Bugno, Yanbin Fu, Dapeng Chen, Leonhard Donle, Ernst Lengyel, Douglas G. Tilley, Matthias Mack, Ronald S. Rock, Steven J. Chmura, Everett E. Vokes, Chuan He, Sean P. Pitroda, Hua Laura Liang, Ralph R. Weichselbaum
You can read the Full Article in Nature.
More posts featuring Daniel E Spratt.