Nerve cells (stained green) grow between the culture of cancer cells
Simon Grillite and Gustavo Ayala
cancer Cells steal parts of power generation from neurons to provide their spread to distant sites, a discovery that can improve treatments against the most bloody tumors.
He says: “This is the first time that the exchange of mitochondria from nerves to cancer cells has appeared,” he says. Elizabeth Rivasky At the comprehensive Rosewil Park Cancer Center, New York, which was not involved in the research. “It is a major next step in cancerous neuroscience, a field that explodes.”
We already knew that neurons, or neurons, inside the surrounding tumors and produce proteins and electrical signs that help cancer to grow and spread. “The high nerve density cancers are associated with the poor diagnostic,” he says, he says Simon Grillite At the University of South Alabama.
Previous studies have also shown that brain cancer cells can obtain mitochondria-energy-generating structures-from non-nerve brain cells. But it was not known whether cancer cells could take mitochondria from neurons, says Grelet.
To find out, he and his colleagues are genetically designed breast cancer cells of mice to contain a red fluorescent molecule and mix them with mouse nerve cells, which contain mitochondria called green pigment, in a laboratory dish. By photographing cells, they found that cancer cells stole the mitochondria from neurons within a few hours.
Grelet says: “Cancer cells offer their membrane to steal, siphon, and mitochondria from neurons,” says Grelet. “It is like a mitochondria train that passes through a very small structure, and entered the cancerous cell simultaneously,” he says.
To see if this happens in the body, researchers injected red breast cancer cells into female mice nipples to form tumors. They also designed the nerves around the tumors to carry green mitochondria. About a month later, 2 percent of cancer cells have gained in these mitochondria tumors of neurons.
On the other hand, 14 percent of the cancer cells that spread to the brain carry the nerve mitochondria-which indicates that the cancer cells with mitochondria derived from the nerves were much better to spread than those that were not. Additional experiments indicate this because cells with stolen mitochondria are better in the physical and chemical pressures they face in the bloodstream.
“There are many obstacles that suffer from a cancerous cell trying to spread,” says Repasky. “They have to get out of the first tumor, make it through vascular barriers, leave the blood, then get enough oxygen and nutrients in the secondary site – most of which do not make it,” she says. “It seems that the theft of mitochondria allows cancer cells to better withstand this obstacle,” she says.
To explore whether this is happening in people, the researchers analyzed the tumor samples from eight women with breast cancer that spread to distant sites inside their bodies. They found that cancer cells of other parts of the body have 17 percent of mitochondria, on average, compared to those in the breast, indicating that the process occurs in patients.
What’s more, the team analyzed the sample of human prostate tumor and found that cancer cells are closer to the nerves contain more mitochondria than those that are far away. “We think it will be the global mechanism to do all kinds of tumors,” says team member. Gustavo Ayala At the University of Texas University in Houston.
The results indicate that preventing the transfer of mitochondria can reduce the spread of the most bloody tumors. “I think this will be possible, at least in certain types of tumors,” says Repasky. Ayala says researchers are planning to develop medicines that can do so.
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