This is another promising
discovery in the field of cancer research.
It will be asking way too much to actually block metastasis with a
simple drug or we might have long since stumbled over it. Yet we now understand a key element in the
process that looks like it can be intercepted.
At least we now understand this
process which has been inevitable but inexplicable to date. We can eliminate the majority of cancer
through surgical intervention but that has normally never stopped the process.
Now we can investigate options that do just that.
Again it is early days but it is
an important discovery.
Key Driver of Metastasis Identified
Released: 10/24/2011 10:30 AM EDT
Embargo expired: 10/31/2011 12:05 AM EDT
Newswise — PHILADELPHIA — Scientists at Dalhousie University in Nova
Scotia have identified a key mechanism of metastasis that could lead to
blocking tumor growth if their findings are confirmed.
In a recent issue of Cancer Research, a journal of the American
Association for Cancer Research, lead researcher David Waisman, Ph.D.,
professor in the Departments of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and
Pathology, and Canada Research Chair in Cancer Research at Dalhousie
University, detailed the key role the macrophage cell surface protein
S100A10 plays in allowing macrophages to move to the site of tumor growth – a
process that is essential to tumor development.
Waisman said the findings are an example of the complicated biology of
cancer.
“We used to think that the only cells that mattered in a tumor were the
cancer cells, and that’s it, but now we are beginning to see that other
cells must collaborate with cancer cells to drive tumor growth and permit an
evolution of the cancer cells into metastatic cells. This change is what
causes poor prognosis and ultimately what kills the patient,” he said.
Waisman and colleagues discovered that tumors will not grow without
macrophage assistance. These macrophages must come from the blood or from other
locations in the tissues. How they are able to move through the tissues or from
the blood supply into the tumor had always been a mystery.
These macrophages need to chew their way through the tissue that forms
a barrier around the growing tumor in order to move into the tumor site and
combine with the cancer cells. The researchers found on the outside surface
of the macrophage is a protein called S100A10, which enables the macrophage to
remove the tissue barriers retarding migration to the tumor site.
Theoretically, blocking either the macrophages or S100A10 chemically
could slow, or even stop, tumor growth.
“We found that the protein, S100A10, acts like a pair of scissors on
the outside of the macrophages that empowers the macrophages with the ability
to chew their way through tissues and enter the tumor site where they release
substances that stimulate cancer cell growth and metastatic evolution,” said
Waisman.
He said the next step is to figure out exactly how S100A10 functions as
a molecular scissor and also to identify pharmaceutical agents that can block
the action of S100A10, thereby preventing the movement of macrophages to the tumor
site. By understanding exactly how S100A10 works at the molecular level, it may
even be possible to design agents which block its activity.
The study was funded by a grant from the Canadian Cancer Society
Research Institute and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
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