KU Leuven discovers new type of colon cancer

June 30, 2022
today at
17:00

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An international study, co-led by KU Leuven, has discovered a new type of colon cancer. This offers perspectives for better diagnoses and therapies. “We opened a new box full of possibilities.”

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In recent years, the worldwide breakthrough of single-cell technology, which allows researchers to study individual cells and map their properties, also gave cancer research a boost.

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Researchers at KU Leuven used this technology to analyze the tumor tissue of 100 colorectal cancer patients in great detail. The university was the only European partner to do this together with hospitals in Singapore and South Korea.

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The study, which will be published Thursday afternoon in the renowned journal Nature Genetics, led to the discovery of a new, previously unknown type of colon cancer.

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‘It has been known for decades that colorectal cancer can be caused when the normal growth mechanism of cells goes haywire, causing too many cells to be produced and tumors to develop,’ says Sabine Tejpar, colorectal cancer researcher at UZ Leuven and KU Leuven and co-lead author of the Nature study.

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Cell identity change

‘We have found that in half of the cases of colorectal cancer, another mechanism causes the condition.’

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More specifically, Tejpar and her international colleagues studied the role of mucosal cells (eptihelial cells in the jargon), which have long been known to be the basis of various cancers such as lung, stomach or breast cancer.

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Our discovery challenges 30 years of insights into colorectal cancer.

Sabine Tejpar

Bowel cancer specialist UZ Leuven and KU Leuven

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‘We discovered that these mucosal cells in the gut can probably change their identity due to an initially limited inflammation, so that they can cause the growth of a tumor.’

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According to Tejpar, the discovery of the biological mechanism behind this new, second type of colon cancer has ‘opened a box full of possibilities.’

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‘Our discovery challenges 30 years of insights into colorectal cancer. In the future we will be able to make a more specific diagnosis and know which of the two types of colon cancer a patient suffers from.’

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After the breakthrough of single-cell technology, cancer researchers can now turn to a new groundbreaking technology. ‘Using so-called spatial technology, it is now also possible to gain a better understanding of how all individual cells interact with each other via a scan of tumor tissue,’ says Tejpar.

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Immunotherapy

In the long term, the basic research published in Nature opens up perspectives in the field of prevention. ‘If in the coming years we succeed in better understanding the workings of the newly discovered inflammatory mechanism, you can try to develop targeted medication to halt that process.’

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In addition, there is hope that effective immunotherapy for both types of colon cancer can be developed. With such a therapy you do not attack the tumor cells directly, but you wake up dormant immune cells to take up the fight.

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In the future, we will be able to make a more specific diagnosis and thus know which of the two types of colon cancer a patient suffers from.

Sabine Tejpar

Colorectal cancer specialist UZ Leuven and KU Leuven

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‘There is a great need for this in the treatment of colorectal cancer,’ says Tejpar. ‘Because, for example, immunotherapy has already proved a success in the treatment of melanoma (a form of skin cancer, ed.) and lung cancer, we are lagging far behind in the field of colorectal cancer and we still have to make do with traditional chemotherapy. So far, immunotherapy has only worked in about 10 percent of colorectal cancer patients.’

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‘About half of the cancers respond well to immunotherapy, the other half do not. We don’t yet know why the immune system doesn’t attack the cancer in those cases. In the major form of colon cancer, my area of expertise, immunotherapy still has zero response.’

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