Clapper, Patti, Schweizer and Mason

Mesothelioma treatment research has benefitted from some extraordinary “accidental” finds in the past but a new study out of South Korea may be one of the strangest.  Scientists there have identified a type of fungus commonly found in dirt that has the potential to slow or even stop the spread of cancer and mesothelioma.   

In a study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in May, researchers led by Ahn Jong-seog, a senior researcher at the state-run Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology, isolated the “Fusarisetin A” fungal metabolite that prevents cancerous cells from spreading but appears to have no ill effects for “normal” non-cancerous cells. 

This is an important breakthrough in mesothelioma research because many traditional treatments for the disease such as chemotherapy and surgery have a devastating effect on the body as a whole and on the patient’s quality of life while having little measurable effect on the disease.

Mesothelioma is like no other cancer.  Caused by asbestos fibers imbedded in the soft tissues of the body, mesothelioma tends to cause localized tumors (except in the case of pleural mesothelioma).  However, if the cancer metastasizes it can travel throughout the body.  The disease can quickly overwhelm the immune system and can kill patients within a few months of diagnosis.   

Because mesothelioma can lie dormant or unnoticed in a body for up to 50 years before causing any symptoms, the cancer is usually not diagnosed until later stages of the disease.  Once the tumors are discovered, there is little that doctors can do and the only treatments available only prolong life span.  There is no cure.

Mesothelioma cancer cells are also highly resistant to traditional cancer therapies.  While a few treatments have been found that slow the growth of the disease, scientists are looking toward ways of preventing it’s spread, preventing lethality, and perhaps even preventing the disease altogether.

Many hope that cell-growth treatments using chemicals and compounds found naturally, such as the fungus metabolite discovered by the South Korean team, will be able to keep disease progression to an absolute minimum and possibly even reverse tumor growth.

Ahn Jong-seog said that while the compound’s properties are very exciting and could possibly lead to an effective cancer therapy in the future, much more work needs to be done in order to understand how it works and how, possibly, to create a treatment from it.