Posted on 08/28/2015 10:15:36 AM PDT by Mellonkronos
[If this pans out, it would not only be one of the great advances in medical history but also would show what genetic research can actually do!]
Cancer researchers dream of the day they can force tumor cells to morph back to the normal cells they once were. Now, researchers on Mayo Clinic’s Florida campus have discovered a way to potentially reprogram cancer cells back to normalcy.
The finding, published in Nature Cell Biology, represents “an unexpected new biology that provides the code, the software for turning off cancer,” says the study’s senior investigator, Panos Anastasiadis, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Cancer Biology on Mayo Clinic’s Florida campus.
That code was unraveled by the discovery that adhesion proteins — the glue that keeps cells together — interact with the microprocessor, a key player in the production of molecules called microRNAs (miRNAs). The miRNAs orchestrate whole cellular programs by simultaneously regulating expression of a group of genes. The investigators found that when normal cells come in contact with each other, a specific subset of miRNAs suppresses genes that promote cell growth. However, when adhesion is disrupted in cancer cells, these miRNAs are misregulated and cells grow out of control. The investigators showed, in laboratory experiments, that restoring the normal miRNA levels in cancer cells can reverse that aberrant cell growth.
The study brings together two so-far unrelated research fields — cell-to-cell adhesion and miRNA biology — to resolve a long-standing problem about the role of adhesion proteins in cell behavior that was baffling scientists,” says the study’s lead author Antonis Kourtidis, Ph.D., a research associate in Dr. Anastasiadis’ lab. “Most significantly, it uncovers a new strategy for cancer therapy,” he adds.
That problem arose from conflicting reports about E-cadherin and p120 catenin — adhesion proteins that are essential for …
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGYTLOGZ40U]
(Excerpt) Read more at longevityreporter.org ...
Pardon my biological ignorance.
This sounds very important, in that perhaps it can make cancer cells act less aggressively abnormal.
But, once the DNA is seriously damaged, now can a cancer cell ever be coerced back into normalcy? It lacks the blueprint; it has lost the information on what “normal” is.
Fascinating. Thanks for posting.
some can be reverted back to normal. some are too damaged and wind up dying off.
Probably available to the public in 20 years.
Recent evidence indicates that 20% of cancers are second events. Killing all of the previous cancer cells is not the complete solution. In many situations cancer is caused by a epigenetic switches that driven by a microenvironment that is concentrated with elevated, glucose, hypoxia, insulin and glucagon. If the microenvironment remains unchanged the epigenetic switches can turn new healthy cells into cancerous cells all over again.
love neuroscience news. do you have the link to their article?
I’ll be long dead before it is available to us plebes.
Bump for later read.
Yes. For example I give you aspirin! Where it just invented today it would probably never, ever reach market because of all the "possible" side effects. Never mind that one of those effects is to ward off heart attacks and DVT or Deep Vein Thrombosis which leads to death by blood clot!
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