Nat Medicine: First discovery! Genetics may drive the spread of cancer!

, June 9, 2020 /PRNewswire
/ -- Sometimes cancer stays motionless, but usually it happens to metastasize and spread to new sites in the body, and scientists have long suspected thatgeneticmutations produc
ed intumordrive potentially malignant events; In a study, scientists from Rockefeller University and others found for the first time that genetic traits that already exist in the body may promote cancer metastasis; researchers say differences in individual genes carried in genes from birth may alter the progression ofmelanoma,geneticvariants may have the same effect on other types of cancerPicture Source: Elizabeth and Vincent Meyer Laboratory of Systems Cancer Biology at The Rockefeller University
The findings of this paper may help researchers reveal the molecular mechanisms of cancer metastasis, while better understanding individual cancer risk to better guide therapy decisionsCancer metastasis occurs when cancer cells escape the original tissue to build newtumorat other sites, a phenomenon that causes most cancer cells to die, and the researchers speculate that cancer cells that occur with mutations within normal cells may be able to "travel" after mutations, but after decades of research, the researchers have not found a gene change that promotes cancer metastasis previous study, researchers have discovered a gene called APOE, which is present in the DNA of all cells in the body before any cancer occurs, and which affects the spread of melanoma , producing proteins that interfere with a range of processes used by cancer cell metastasis, such as forming blood vessels and growing deep into healthy tissues As well as resisting attacks from tumors immune cells, there are three different versions of the APOE gene in the human body: ApoE2, ApoE 3, and ApoE 4, which the researchers speculate may help explain why melanoma in different populations does not progress differently the researchers said that mice carrying the ApoE 4 gene had the smallest tumor sonand and the slowest spread, and that after further study, they found that ApoE 4 was the most effective version of the ApoE gene in enhancing the body's immune response to tumor cells, and that mice carrying ApoE 4 tended to have large numbers of tumor-resistant T-cells recruited into melanoma tumor Therefore, the effect of ApoE mutation lies in the different way it regulates the body's immune system attack repeated the mouse experiments with genetic data from more than 300 melanoma patients, the results showed that, on average, individuals carrying ApoE4 had the most time to live and individuals carrying ApoE2 had the shortest survival time, so clinicians could assess the risk of cancer progression by observing the genetic properties of the patient's body This may also affect the course of treatment, melanoma
patients sometimes receive treatment, thereby enhancing the body's immune system against cancer, the researchers note, and patients carrying ApoE4 respond best to immunoboosted therapy similarly, the researchers also found that RGX-104, an experimental compound that increases the production of ApoE, helps mice carrying ApoE4 to better resist tumors , which is currently in the phase of clinical trials; Treatments in patients with E-mutations, such as ApoE2, are associated with an increased risk of cancer metastasis, and so far research has shown that ApoE3's metastasis inhibition is somewhere between the other two, so researchers need to find patients who genetic information that puts them at risk of survival, so they can develop effective treatments for them the results of this study may also be applied to other diseases, such as studies that have found that mutations in ApoE can trigger Alzheimer's disease, and ThatApoE4 increases the risk of neurodegenerative disease swells patients rather than inhibiting the progression of cancer Researchers don't yet know the key role ApoE plays in the onset of Alzheimer's disease, but they believe that more in-depth research later in the year may shed light on the mysterious link between ApoE and cancer (BioValleyBioon.com) origins: Ostendorf, B.N., Bilanovic, J., Adaku, N et al.
Common germline variants of the human apoe gene modulate melanoma progression and .
Nat Med (2020) doi: 10.1038/s41591-020-0879-3