Teen's fundraising supports research into her type of cancer
Megan Bugg has raised more than $100,000 for childhood cancer research by Dr. David Walterhouse and his lab at Stanley Manne Children's Research Institute at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago. Here's a look at the focus of his research into Megan's form of cancer:
What he's studying: "I've been studying a gene pathway that seems to become more active as rhabdomyosarcoma cells develop drug resistance, and the hope would be that one day we would have medicines that inhibit this gene pathway and would allow the chemotherapy to once again become effective," says Walterhouse, a professor at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
His findings so far: "We work with rhabdomyosarcoma cells. We've done some work in mice, and it's still in the early stages, and a lot more work needs to be done.
"But we are seeing consistent results, especially in alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, that as the cells become resistant to one of the most commonly used chemotherapy medicines, a gene pathway that's called the Hedgehog pathway, and specifically a gene in the Hedgehog pathway that is called the GLI1 gene, goes up. It has higher levels of expression as cells become drug resistant.
"So that tells us maybe if we can make GLI1 activity go down or its expression go down, that perhaps we can make the cells once again sensitive to chemotherapy."
The importance of childhood cancer research funding: "Most of the findings that have been learned in childhood cancers also apply to adults. Childhood cancers seem to be somewhat simpler than adult cancers.
"So as a cancer develops, within cancer cells there are mutations that happen in specific genes, and those mutations are in genes that cause cells to grow and divide and to stay alive. So that in adult cancers it may take many, many mutations to get to that point that you truly have a cancer that's growing and spreading, all those types of things.
"In childhood cancers, it seems that there are fewer mutations. ... But the mutations that we find in childhood cancers are often present in adult cancers as well.
"And so learning about things in simpler situations sometimes goes a long way to help the more complex situations. So what we learn in kids also can apply to adults."