Connie Eaves. Photo courtesy of BC Cancer Agency.
Researchers at UBC, Simon Fraser University and the BC Cancer Agency have developed a new method to identify and separate stem cells that reside in the tonsils.
Their research, published in Stem Cell Reports, aimed to find out why tonsils are particularly susceptible to human papillomavirus (HPV). While 90 per cent of human tonsil cancers show evidence of HPV infection, and HPV is a major risk cancer for cervical cancer, little is known about its role in causing tonsil cancers.
When the researchers purified the stem cells that coat the tonsils and made them incorporate a cancer-causing gene normally transmitted by HPV, the cells grew abnormally in a special tissue culture system, creating what one might imagine the beginning stages of human tonsil cancer would look like.
The study shows how stem cells from human tonsils can be isolated and studied to glean insights about the initial stages of cancer of the middle part of the throat, whose incidence is rising worldwide, especially in men.
The research was done by Professor Connie Eaves in the UBC Department of Medical Genetics, a Distinguished Scientist at the Terry Fox Laboratory in the BC Cancer Agency (BCCA); Miriam Rosin, a Professor of Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology at Simon Fraser University (SFU), a UBC Clinical Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Director of BCCA’s Oral Cancer Prevention Program; and SFU graduate student Catherine Kang.
This work was supported by grants from the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute, the Canadian Cancer Research Society and the B.C. Cancer Foundation.