Ewing’s sarcoma is a bone cancer commonly diagnosed in about 250 U.S. teenagers per year. If early chemotherapy is effective, improvement can be durable. But for children and teens who respond poorly to a first attempt at chemotherapy or if the disease spreads, long-term survival can be less than 10 percent.

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published this week in the journal Molecular Cancer Research shows an important difference that may explain why some respond and some don’t: the existence of high levels of the protein EYA3.

“First, levels of EYA3 could be a tool in offering an accurate prognosis and choosing how aggressively to treat Ewing’s Sarcoma, and second we hope that by lowering levels of EYA3, we could help increase the effectiveness of existing therapies for Ewing’s sarcoma,” says Tyler Robin, PhD, first author of the recent paper.

Researchers recently defined the role of EYA3 as a DNA repair molecule and Tyler showed that EYA3 has a similar repair role in Ewing’s sarcoma – high levels of EYA3 help the tissue survive during and recover after treatment with chemotherapy. Importantly, when Robin knocked down EYA3 in Ewing’s sarcoma cells, they became sensitized to chemotherapy.

“The genetic mutation that creates Ewing’s sarcoma also leads to high levels of EYA3,” says Heide Ford, PhD, investigator at the CU Cancer Center and associate professor in the CU School of Medicine department of ob/gyn, and the paper’s senior author.

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