Hormone may be a cancer cure

Press, 2 July 1986, Page 47

Hormone may be a cancer cure

BY

DANIEL HANEY

NZPA-AP Boston Scientists have isolated an elusive hormone that helps control whether foetuses become boys or girls, and they say it may provide a new tool for curing female reproductive cancers. Researchers say they have tracked down the gene that regulates production of the hormone, called Mullerian inhibiting substance, so that it can be mass-produced. The effort represents another successful attempt by biotechnology to manufacture rare human hormones outside the body for the treatment of the disease. But like most of the other hormones concocted this way, its ultimate usefulness in taming human ills is not clear. Researchers hope the

substance will suppress or cure cancers of the ovaries, cervix, uterine lining, fallopian tubes and vagina. These cancers kill about 22,000 American women each year. Dr Patricia Donahoe of Massachusetts General Gospital said she hopes that Mullerian inhibiting substance, or M. 1.5., will be a highly selective chemo therapeutic agent that will not cause toxicity in other cells. Human testing could begin in two years, she said. Until then, the material will not be available for even experimental use in the treatment of women with cancer. A report on the work, conducted by Dr Donahue and Dr Richard Cate of Biogen, was published in the journal “Cell.” Early in their develop-

ment, all foetuses have two tubes that are the forerunners of sex organs. One, the Wolffian duct, develops into male sex organs, while the other, the Mullerian duct, becomes female organs. Male foetuses produce M. 1.5., but females at this stage do not. As its name Implies, the hormone makes the Mullerian duct shrink and disappear. With another hormone, testosterone, the male foetus goes on to grow male sex organs based on the Wolffian duct. Women’s sex organs develop from the Mullerian duct. Scientists reasoned that a hormone that inhibits the growth of this duct might also stop cancers of the adult organs that are derived from the duct.