Tumour switch
Doctors have found a universal "growth switch" in cancer cells
American biologists have discovered that cancer cells retain a special "growth switch", which is usually turned on during the growth of organs in the embryo at the moment when they reach the desired size. Medications that stimulate this cell element will help slow down the growth of the tumor.
An international group of doctors has discovered a set of proteins common to many cancer cells, the appearance of which in the vicinity of the tumor dramatically slows down its growth, which can be used to treat cancer and make life easier for patients, according to an article published in the journal Oncogene (Sharif et al., Cell growth density modulates cancer cell vascular invasion via Hippo pathway activity and CXCR2 signaling).
"We thought that when cancer cells go crazy, they just lose control of themselves. But it turned out that in fact, these crazy cells retain some part of the memory of their "law-abiding" state and how good cells behave, which greatly surprised us. This is why our discovery is so serious and important," said Anton Wellstein from Georgetown University (in a press release from Georgetown University Medical Center When cancer cells stop acting like cancer – VM).
Wellstein and his colleagues found that cancer cells retained the ability to control their division, despite extensive damage to the DNA structure, almost by accident. One of the authors of the article noticed, observing the growth of tumor samples in test tubes, that cancer cells from "overpopulated" vessels penetrated much worse into healthy tissues of experimental animals than cultures from relatively empty vessels.
Differences in the rate of tumor growth surprised biologists, and they tried to find the cause of this unusual phenomenon by comparing the protein contents of cancer cells. It turned out that the reason for slowing the growth of cells from "overpopulated" test tubes was that a chain of Hippo proteins was included in them and showed great activity, controlling the size of organs during the growth of the embryo.
(The picture shows a book published in 2013, which the authors of the discovery, obviously, have not read. Otherwise, why would they be surprised? – VM).
"Hypothetically, it is possible to make the same cancer cells aggressive or calm, depending on whether Hippo is turned on or not, and this really amazes our imagination. From the point of view of genetics, both calm and aggressive cells are absolutely the same, the only thing that was different was the activity of this metabolic cascade," Wellstein continued.
According to him, a full-fledged version of Hippo is present, as experiments in his laboratory have shown, not in one, but in almost all common types of cancer, including breast, prostate, pancreatic and lung cancers. Scientists believe that drugs that activate Hippo can be used to slow down the development of cancer in the early stages and prevent its metastasis.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru16.03.2015