Stone researching new treatment for bladder cancer

A professor of pediatrics at ETSU, William Stone, is studying a novel medicinal concept to treat bladder cancer. 

Stone has his doctoral degree in molecular biology and has done work at Duke University, University of California, Meharry Medical College and ETSU. 

Stone often reads scientific articles related to his field of work, one of which sparked an interest in bladder cancer. 

“The interest in the subject arose from reading a research article,” said Stone. “It found that people with bladder cancer excrete an enzyme. The enzyme is called an esterase and that the levels of that esterase corresponded to the severity of the bladder cancer and was a good predictor of bladder cancer, as well.” 

Stone began to study the esterases in bladder cancer cells and applied for a grant from ETSU, which he received about six months ago. 

“I am interested in esterases and cancer, so turns out they didn’t identify what esterase was excreted in bladder cancer patients,” said Stone. “So my first question was that there is a lot of them, so, ‘Which one is being excreted?’ That lead to the question of, ‘Which ones are in bladder cancer cells?’ and even that hadn’t been studied.”

Studies show that approximately 17,000 men and women die from bladder cancer annually. Bladder cancer is the eighth most deadly type of cancer. Chemotherapy, or radiation therapy, is the current treatment for bladder cancer, but Stone says that the downfalls to this are the side effects and that it is not always effective. 

“The hypothesis that we are eventually going to test is that the patients that have high levels of esterases would be screening high levels of oxidized protein hydrolase,” said Stone. “If they have that, then the prodrug would be ideal for them. So we would not be treating patients who would not have the high levels. That is called personalized medicine.”

Stone sees research like puzzles that are meaningful, and he says he has a lot of fun doing it. One of his long-term goals is to use basic science to solve clinical problems.