Slow down cancer
Biologists have learned to slow down the growth of cancer cells
Biologists from the USA have found a way to suppress or greatly slow down the growth of cancerous tumors by blocking the work of a protein necessary to start the division process of any living cells, according to an article published in the journal Science (Elbarbary et al., Tudor-SN–mediated endonucleolytic decay of human cell microRNAs promotes G1/S phase transition).
"We knew that TSN protein molecules are more common in cancer cells than in their healthy counterparts, and our study shows that blocking its work can slow or stop the ultrafast growth of cancer," said Reyad Elbarbary from the University of Rochester (in a press release Study: A New Way to Slow Cancer Cell Growth – VM).
One of the distinguishing features of cancer cells is that they absorb a lot of nutrients and oxygen, using them for their uncontrolled growth and reproduction. In recent years, scientists have been actively trying to understand how they manage to do this, and use the data obtained to create drugs that "suffocate" cancer cells or prevent their reproduction.
For example, in February of this year, biologists from Moscow State University found that substances that prevent the penetration of oxygen and glucose into cancer cells are much better at destroying the tumor than conventional chemotherapy that damages DNA.
Elbarbari and his colleagues discovered another method of "unconventional" cancer control by studying how cell cultures extracted from tumors inside the uterus and kidneys multiply. During these experiments, scientists "turned off" various genes associated with cell division, and observed what happened to them after such procedures.
The attention of the authors of the discovery was attracted by the TSN gene and protein, which perform functions that at first glance are not related to cell division. This substance, as the researchers explain, is responsible for the destruction of short RNA molecules that block or stimulate the "reading" of other genes. Such molecules are formed in cells continuously, and scientists had not previously assumed that this protein could be associated with the proliferation of cancer cells.
It turned out that this was not the case – the "shutdown" of TSN significantly slowed down the division of cancer cells. This happened for the reason that this protein does not decompose all short RNAs, but only a set of several dozen similar molecules that block the work of genes associated with the transition of a cell from a resting state to the first phase of division – CDK2, CCND1, E2F1 and E2F2.
Accordingly, damage to the TSN gene or neutralization of the protein molecules themselves increases the concentration of RNA molecules and gives them the opportunity to block the division and growth genes. This significantly slows down the growth of cancer cells, which makes it possible to use such a technique as one of the elements of chemotherapy or a separate method of combating malignant tumors.
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29.05.2017