New U.S. study: Cancer patients are saved! A fatty acid can kill human cancer cells!

Introduction: in medicine, cancer refers to the malignant tumor originated from epithelial tissue, which is the most common type of malignant tumor.the term "cancer" generally refers to all malignant tumors.cancer has biological characteristics such as abnormal cell differentiation and proliferation, uncontrolled growth, invasion and metastasis.the treatment of cancer has always been a worldwide problem.recently, researchers at Washington State University in the United States have confirmed that a fatty acid called Di high gamma linolenic acid (dgla) can kill human cancer cells.published in the journal developmental cell, the researchers found that dgla can induce iron death in animal models and actual human cancer cells.iron death is an iron dependent cell death discovered in recent years. It has become a hot spot in disease research because it is closely related to many disease processes.Jennifer watts, an associate professor at Washington State University and co-author of the study, said, "this finding has many implications, including a step toward a potential treatment for cancer.if you can deliver dgla to cancer cells precisely, it can promote iron death and lead to cancer cell death.just understanding the role of this fat in promoting iron death may also affect our view of kidney disease and neurodegenerative disease, in which case we want to prevent this type of cell death. Dgla is a kind of polyunsaturated fatty acid, which is rarely found in human body and in human diet.compared with other fatty acid phases (fatty acids in fish oil), dgla is relatively insufficient.watts used nematodes as animal models to study diets including dgla for nearly 20 years. Caenorhabditis elegans is a tiny worm. Because it is transparent, scientists can easily study cell level activities in the whole animal's relatively short life cycle, so it is often used in molecular research.results found in Caenorhabditis elegans cells can also be transferred to human cells.watts's team found that feeding nematodes with bacteria rich in dgla killed all the germ cells and stem cells that make germ cells in the nematode, and there were many signs of iron death in the way of cell death.Marcos Perez, a doctoral student at Washington State University and lead author of the study, said, "many of the mechanisms we see in worms are consistent with the characteristics of iron death in mammalian systems, including redox active iron and irreparable oxidized lipids, similar to molecular executioners."to find out whether these conclusions apply to human cells, Watts and Perez worked with Scott Dixon of Stanford University, who has been studying iron death and its potential for cancer treatment for many years.based on the results of nematode research, the researchers found that dgla induces iron death in human cancer cells. they also found a protective effect on dgla by interacting with another fatty acid called ether lipid. when the researchers took out the ether lipids, cell death was faster in the presence of dgla. in addition to these findings, the researchers also confirmed that Caenorhabditis elegans can be used as a useful animal model for studying iron death. it is used to study iron death which mainly depends on bacterial culture. to keep the research going, Watts's team recently received $1.4 million from the National Institutes of health to study what causes nematode germ cells to be so sensitive to dgla, and to study the role of mitochondria, the organelles involved in fat burning and metabolism, in iron death. reference: [1] [2] recommended reading [Nature journal] Brown University Research: drug therapy can improve the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy [cell] major progress: Chinese scientists revealed the complete proteome map of lung adenocarcinoma for the first time [Nature journal] the largest single cell RNA sequencing project in the history of [Nature journal]! Discovery of glioblastoma stem cells for the first time is expected to inhibit cancer cells