Researchers think that protein reprocessing in the body could be a crucial part of formation of tumour. The recycling process which researchers studied was known as CAM (chaperone-mediated autophagy). It is a standard part of a cell’s routine, involving taking away of injured commodities and recycling the unrefined materials.
The protein recycling was hastened in more than thirty types of tumourous cell. In lab study researchers from Albert Einstein College of Medicine from Yeshiva University when interrupted the process of recycling in mice with cancer, they found that the tumours began to shrink. The results were encouraging and could be a new target for drug development.
Prof Ana Cuervo, one of the researchers, believes cancerous cells are using this method in an attempt to stimulate their unusually speedily growth. Cancer cells appear to have erudite how to optimize this system to attain the energy they require. When they studied a range of tissues, including lung, breast and liver, they found the activity level of CAM was higher in cancerous cells than normal ones.
Then researchers made use of a virus to contaminate cells having short oddments of genetic matter, which would turn off the process of recycling. The use of virus slowed the growth of tumours in the mice suffering human lung cancers. It resulted in shrinkage of tumour dramatically and almost completely blockage of metastasis, added Prof Cuervo.
The study findings reported in Science Translational Medicine and researchers believe could lead to an anticancer drug. By discovering a chemical which would inhibit the recycling process they anticipate to be capable to imitate the effect the virus had.
CMA inhibitors could be supportive for cancer therapy, because they should inhibit tumour growth and also diminish the ability of tumour cells to metastasise, explained Jayanta Debnath from the University of California, San Francisco and Prof Andrew Thorburn from the University of Colorado. But they warned, currently they do not have practicable method to selectively inhibit CMA in patients.
source : www.bbc.co.uk/news