Gothenburg [Sweden]Nov 17 (ANI): Fighting cancer that spreads to new organs all over the body makes it much more challenging.
The metastatic tumors that spread from the original have now been shown by researchers at Chalmers University of Technology to adapt their metabolism to the tissue they thrive in. The discovery is an important piece of the puzzle in the search for more effective treatments and represents a breakthrough in our understanding of metastatic cancer .
The human body’s metabolism is like its internal combustion engine. It is necessary for our cells to develop and get energy. As a result, it is a crucial target for cancer therapies aimed at stopping the spread of cancer cells.
Researchers from Chalmers’ Department of Systems and Synthetic Biology have recently published a new study that looks at how the metabolism works in cancer cells that have spread to new organs via metastases, also called secondary tumors. The study gave the researchers new perspectives on how metastases adapt to their new surroundings.
“Obviously, the local environment affects the cancer cells more than previously known. The metastasizing tumors should show the same metabolic characteristics regardless of where in the body they are, but we discovered that the cancer cells largely adapted their metabolism to the new tissue in order to continue to develop and grow This is important knowledge, which shows that we cannot consider the metastases as their original tumors, says Fariba Roshanzamir, PhD in systems and synthetic biology at Chalmers and the study’s lead author.
Tools to inhibit cancer metabolism The ground-breaking findings have been determined by Fariba Roshanzamir, a member of Professor Jens Nielsen’s research group at Chalmers, in collaboration with Swedish and foreign colleagues. The study was particularly concerned with so-called triple-negative breast cancer, a serious form of the disease that is challenging to treat with medicine. However, the researchers claim that the findings are generalizable to all forms of metastatic cancer. This provides a new opportunity to create treatments that work better.
“If we succeed in turning off the metabolism of a tumor, it will stop working and this study provides important keys to better understand what to target. Selecting metabolic inhibitors that specifically target the metastases in those organs to which the tumor has spread, rather than Treating them as their original tumors is of great importance to be able to find good strategies for treatments in the future, she says.
A new perspective on the characteristics of metastases One of the main causes of death for cancer patients today is the spread of the disease to new organs. One of the study’s authors, Jens Nielsen, professor of systems and synthetic biology at Chalmers University of Technology, believes that it may result in a new understanding of the properties and behavior of metastases.
This is a significant development in our understanding of metastatic cancer and a crucial step towards developing more specialized medicines, the author argues. (ANI)
Source: sn.dk