New approach makes cancer cells explode! Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and colleagues at Uppsala University have discovered an entirely new mechanism to kill tumour cells in glioblastoma. Researchers in an initial stage have exposed tumour cells to a wide range of molecules and the results are published in the journal Cell. If the cancer cells died, the molecule was considered of interest for further studies, which initially applied to over 200 kinds of molecules. Following extensive studies, a single molecule has been identified as being of particular interest. The researchers wanted to find out why it caused cancer cell death. It was found that the molecule gave the cancer cells an uncontrolled vacuolization, a process in which the cell carries substances from outside the cell into its interior. This carrying process is made via the vacuoles, which can roughly be described as blisters or bags consisting of cell membranes. The process is similar to what was behind last years Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, the discovery that describes how cellular vesicles move things from the interior of the cell to its surface. When cancer cells were filled with a large amount of vacuoles, the cell membranes (the outer wall of the cell) collapsed and the cell simply exploded and necrotized. This is an entirely new mechanism for cancer treatment. A possible medicine based on this principle would therefore attack the glioblastoma in an entirely new way. This principle may also work for other cancer diseases, we have not really explored this yet, says Patrik Ernfors, professor of tissue biology at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics at Karolinska Institute.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 17:27:55 +0000
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