New Approach to Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment

We will utilize conditioned media (CM) from cultures of the nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) cell line CNEI. This cell line was derived from a patient in China and is the only NPC cell line that has been adapted to grow in the absence of serum. Preliminary evidence has established that the CNEI cell line grows by an autocrine mechanism and that CNEI CM contain bFGF and possibly three other novel growth factors that may mediate in part the autocrine growth of the CNEI cell. We also have identified a growth inhibitory activity in CM that blocks growth factor stimulated 3T3 cell growth. Our goals our to purify and characterize both growth stimulatory and inhibitory activities for CNE1 CM by established methodologies, to characterize these factors by multiple criteria, and to establish role(s) of these factors in the autocrine growth of CNE1 cells. Phase I will be directed to identifying and purifying novel activities to the extent possible within the 6 months available. These new factors will be detection of human NPC nasopharyngeal cancer in primary biopsy and in metastatic tissues and perhaps of antigen in blood for early detection as our long- term goals. These factors also will be used to develop reagents as possible therapeutics. It is hoped to provide new approaches to diagnosis and treatment of human nasopharyngeal carcinoma.