Scientists have learned about the potential breakthrough in tumor hibernation

Scientists at Virginia Commonwealth University's Macy's Cancer Center may have discovered a major method in which cancer cells that are not found in organisms have been awarded more than $1 million to study the potential of new therapies that target and destroy cells in specific states of tumor hibernation.Cancer cells usually migrate from the organs of their origin and are hidden inactive in other parts of the body. These cells can be reactivated at any time and create a serious risk of recurrence and metastasis. Once the disease spreads, the chances of curing the cancer are greatly reduced.Tumor hibernation remains a bigger mystery to the scientific understanding of cancer progression; Identifying and killing inactive tumor cells remains a prominent challenge in the field of cancer treatment.However, Massey's ongoing research could provide important new insights into new cancer treatments by targeting cells in specific inactive states called aging. The study was led by Dr. David Gewirtz, a member of Macy's Developmental Therapy Research Program and professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine; Hisashi Harada, Ph.D., member of the Macy's Cancer Cell Signals Research Program and Associate Professor, Philips Institute of Oral Health, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Stomatology; And Joseph Landry, Ph.D., a member of the Macy's Cancer Molecular Genetics Research Program and an assistant professor of human and molecular genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.“ It's not clear how tumor cells survive in the body for months or years, only to break sleep and lead to relapse," Gewirtz said. "Our study suggests that one form of tumor sleep may be aging, an extended form of growth stagnation that can be induced in tumor cells through chemotherapy and radiation. In fact, if dormant tumors are in this aging state, they may be easily eliminated by hemolytic agents (a class of small molecules being studied to see if they selectively induce the death of senessed cells). " cell aging has long been understood as a reaction to DNA damage, in which normal cells stop dividing; However, its role in cancer cells is largely unknown, and hemolytic agents are drugs programmed to find and kill cells in an aging state.Research led by Gewirtz and recently published in Biopics has shown that breast and lung cancer cells in the aging state caused by chemotherapy can eventually recover and reproduce rapidly in cultured and mice. The findings challenge a widespread belief about aging cancer cells.“ Aging has been widely recognized for years as an irreversible form of growth," explains Gewirtz. Basedthese findings, Gewirtz published an article in Cancer Research suggesting that senescing cells are important in further research to better understand how tumor cells escape existing cancer treatments and hide in hibernation, and to provide information for the development of new cancer treatments.“ If aging is a form of tumor hibernation, in some cases tumor cells that escape aging and survive will be the source of relapsed diseases. Their elimination will provide survival advantages for cancer patients," Gewirtz added.As a means of further exploring the concept, Gewirtz, Harada and Landry received a five-year, $1.2 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to study whether hemolytic drugs can effectively eliminate aging-like lung tumor cells to prevent or, at the least significant, inhibit cancer recurrence. They will test the ability of the drug ABT-263, a BCL-2 inhibitor, to target and destroy cells in an aging state, and try to determine specific roles related to the destruction or preservation of BCL-2 family proteins (the genes that regulate cell death) and sleep tumor cells.It is not clear what role the immune system played in maintaining the sleep of treatment-induced tumors.“ The immune system has been known to control tumor growth for some time," Landry said. They can have complex effects on the control of therapeuticly induced sleeping cells. Onethe main objectives of this study is to establish participation in the immune response to tumor cell aging caused by chemotherapy and radiation in the absence and presence of hemolytic drugs.“ We also want to develop a treatment strategy to eliminate non-small cell lung cancer cells that can cause relapse," Gewirtz said. (Compiled by this web)