The cloning of PPARg made it possible to study the receptor in the laboratory. In 1995, Spiegelman and his colleagues made the surprising discovery that troglitazone and similar diabetes drugs activated PPARg, causing liposarcoma cells to begin differentiating. The new study begins to bear out those hopes. Spiegelman's work was augmented by research by Samuel Singer, M.D., a surgical oncologist at Dana-Farber and Brigham and Women's Hospital and who heads a laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Because other types of cancer cells, including most colon cancers and many types of breast and prostate cancers, have PPARg receptors, troglitazone may well be able to spur differentiation in those diseases as well.
Clinical studies are now under way to determine whether they can.
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is a principal teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School and is one of 35 federally designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the United States.