Lung Changes Can Be Early Warning of Breast Cancer Spread

AHA Publisher — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 07:00:11 +0000

Michelle Marks via NaturalHealth365 – Changes in healthy lung tissue can be an early signal that the lung is preparing to receive breast cancer cells that are metastasizing — spreading to other organs. This is the breakthrough finding of a study from researchers at Israel’s Tel Aviv University, Sheba Medical Center, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center and Weizmann Institute of Science. In many types of cancers, including breast cancer, the main cause of death is when the cancer cells metastasize and proliferate in essential organs. Metastases may appear after several years even after surgical removal of the primary tumor, chemotherapy and radiation. Methods currently available locate metastases only when they are quite large – when the disease is at an advanced stage, and there are few treatment options. Prof. Neta Erez, chair of pathology at TAU’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine, previously discovered that designated tissues in organs where the metastases are set to arrive prepare a hospitable environment for them, long before the appearance of the metastasized cells. In the present study, Erez and her research team searched for signs of these changes, which may be used in the future to identify the start of the process. They focused on connective tissue cells, known as fibroblasts, in the lungs of lab mice with a model of breast cancer. “In a normal situation, fibroblasts play a central role in healing wounds and injury to the lungs, but recent studies revealed that cancer is successful in recruiting them and causing them to produce a supportive environment for it,” Erez said. As described in the journal eLife, the scientists also identified the proteins that initiate the preparation processes in fibroblasts. “We believe that in the future, our findings can aid in the identification of the metastatic process even before the disseminated cancer cells thrive and colonize the metastatic organ, with the purpose of providing prophylactic treatment. Such treatment may save the lives of millions of people worldwide,” Erez said. To read the original article click here.

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Protein in Prostate Cancer May Inhibit Tumor Growth

AHA Publisher — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 07:00:57 +0000

University of Georgia via EurekAlert – Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer among men, according to the American Cancer Society. It’s also one of the trickiest cancers to diagnose and treat. But new research from the University of Georgia has identified a protein that appears to prevent the cancer from spreading to and colonizing the bone, providing a new target for future therapeutics. “Unfortunately, prostate cancer that has spread to the bone is very aggressive, often lethal and very difficult to treat,” said Brian Cummings, corresponding author of the study and head of the College of Pharmacy’s pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences department. “Even in cases of successful treatment, the patient’s quality of life is severely lessened due to bone loss.” Prostate cancer that hasn’t spread beyond nearby organs has nearly a 100% survival rate, meaning almost all of these patients will live at least another five or more years after their initial diagnosis and treatment. But for men whose cancer has spread to other organs or the bone, that five-year survival rate plummets to 30%, according to the American Cancer Society. In the U.S., about one in every eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer and more than 34,000 men die each year from the disease. The new study, published by Scientific Reports, focused on cancer-associated fibroblasts, which are the most abundant type of cell in tumors and are responsible for cancer growth and spread. The researchers found that knocking out a specific protein, called glypican-1, could prevent tumor cells from spreading into nearby bone. The study supports a previous report from Cummings’ laboratory suggesting that this protein may prevent tumor growth. The researchers found that the protein doesn’t alter the cancer cells themselves. Instead it affects a group of neighboring cells called fibroblasts. Fibroblasts are cells that help make up connective tissues in people and animals. But fibroblasts can also be present in cancerous tumors, where they facilitate cancer growth and spread. To determine the glypican-1 protein’s role in helping cancer spread, the researchers combined human prostate cancer cells and human bone-derived cells to examine how the cancer cells transformed the fibroblast. Then they genetically modified the cancer cells and the fibroblast to knock out the protein. Without the protein, the prostate cancer cells had problems transforming the fibroblast. The study was the first to demonstrate such a role for glypican-1 and suggests that this protein may have the same effect on tumor growth in people. “Part of the significance of this study is that it demonstrates how cancer cells are able to change their environment in ways to facilitate their own growth,” Cummings said. “Prostate cancer cells alter their environment so that they can colonize bone. This study identifies a role for a protein that appears to inhibit the harmful changes that prostate cancer makes to the bone.” “This protein appears to stop the ability of cancer cells to change their environment, which decreases the cancer’s aggressiveness. The fact that this protein is found in the bone, where many aggressive prostate cancer cells reside, further increases the potential impact of this work.” To read the original article click here.

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Lung Changes Can Be Early Warning of Breast Cancer Spread

Protein in Prostate Cancer May Inhibit Tumor Growth