Washington, Nov 17 (ANI): Scientists have found that cancer cells tap into a natural recycling system to obtain the energy they need to keep dividing, suggesting potential new target for treatments.
In the study, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University used genetic manipulation to turn off this recycling system within the walls of cells and stop both tumour growth and metastasis (cancer spread).
Scientists have known that cancer cells require a large amount of energy in the form of glucose (sugar) to support their abnormally rapid growth. But it wasn't clear how cancer cells met those energy needs.
The Einstein study showed that cancer cells fuel their growth by revving up autophagy, a recycling process that occurs in cell compartments called lysosomes.
During autophagy, which literally means "self-eating," Pac-Man-like lysosomes digest worn-out proteins and other damaged cellular components.
"But lysosomes are not merely trash containers," said Ana Maria Cuervo, M.D., Ph.D., the study's senior author and professor of developmental and molecular biology, of anatomy and structural biology and of medicine.
"They are more like little recycling plants in which cellular debris is transformed into energy. Cancer cells seem to have learned how to optimise this system to obtain the energy they need," she explained.
Dr. Cuervo and her colleagues detected unusually high levels of chaperone-mediated autophagy, one of the types of autophagy, in cells from more than 40 types of human tumours - but not in healthy tissue surrounding the tumours.
"When we used genetic manipulation to block the activity of this recycling process, the cancer cells stopped dividing and most of them died," Dr. Cuervo said.
"We also applied this procedure to tumours in mice, resulting in dramatic tumour shrinkage and almost complete blockage of metastasis," she stated.
The researchers believe that selectively blocking this type of autophagy in cancer cells could be a useful strategy for shrinking tumours and halting metastasis.
The findings have been just published in the online edition of Science Translational Medicine. (ANI)
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