Forum for Science, Industry and Business

Molecules can block breast cancer's ability to spread

MicroRNAs are known to inhibit the activity of entire sets of genes associated with cancer metastasis – a process that leads to the majority of cancer-related deaths. The new work explains how the loss of certain microRNAs allows cancer cells to migrate through organ tissue and to grow more rapidly.

The researchers examined human breast cancer cells with strong metastatic ability and found that the cells had lost large numbers of three different microRNA molecules. Conversely, when researchers put those molecules back into human breast cancer tumors in mice, the tumors lost their ability to spread.

In addition, the researchers looked at breast cancer patients and discovered that those with tumors that had lost these molecules were much more likely to suffer from cancer metastasis to the lung and bone.

“The identification of molecules that inhibit a cell’s metastatic potential may help guide clinical decision-making in the future by enabling oncologists to more accurately identify patients at highest risk for metastatic relapse,” said the study’s lead author Sohail Tavazoie, MD, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Oncology-Hematology Fellowship program at MSKCC.

In further analyzing one of these microRNAs, called miR-335, investigators found that miR-335 works by suppressing certain genes that are associated with human metastasis, particularly SOX4, which acts as a transcription factor (meaning that it regulates a group of genes responsible for cell development and migration), and tenascin-C, which functions outside the cell in what is called the extracellular matrix and is implicated in cell migration.

“We now have a better understanding of the role this molecular pathway plays as a suppressor of breast cancer’s ability to spread to the lung and bone, and we have identified the genes involved in that process. These findings may enhance our ability to come up with more effective drugs to prevent or treat cancer metastasis,” said Joan Massagué, PhD, Chair of the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program at MSKCC, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, and the study’s senior author.

Esther Napolitano | EurekAlert!
Further information:
http://www.mskcc.org

Im Focus: Regensburg physicists watch electron transfer in a single molecule

For the first time, an international team of scientists based in Regensburg, Germany, has recorded the orbitals of single molecules in different charge states in a novel type of microscopy. The research findings are published under the title “Mapping orbital changes upon electron transfer with tunneling microscopy on insulators” in the prestigious journal “Nature”.

The building blocks of matter surrounding us are atoms and molecules. The properties of that matter, however, are often not set by these building blocks...

Im Focus: University of Konstanz gains new insights into the recent development of the human immune system

Scientists at the University of Konstanz identify fierce competition between the human immune system and bacterial pathogens

Cell biologists from the University of Konstanz shed light on a recent evolutionary process in the human immune system and publish their findings in the...

Im Focus: Transformation through Light

Laser physicists have taken snapshots of carbon molecules C₆₀ showing how they transform in intense infrared light

When carbon molecules C₆₀ are exposed to an intense infrared light, they change their ball-like structure to a more elongated version. This has now been...

Im Focus: Famous “sandpile model” shown to move like a traveling sand dune

Researchers at IST Austria find new property of important physical model. Results published in PNAS

The so-called Abelian sandpile model has been studied by scientists for more than 30 years to better understand a physical phenomenon called self-organized...

Im Focus: Cryo-force spectroscopy reveals the mechanical properties of DNA components

Physicists from the University of Basel have developed a new method to examine the elasticity and binding properties of DNA molecules on a surface at extremely low temperatures. With a combination of cryo-force spectroscopy and computer simulations, they were able to show that DNA molecules behave like a chain of small coil springs. The researchers reported their findings in Nature Communications.

DNA is not only a popular research topic because it contains the blueprint for life – it can also be used to produce tiny components for technical applications.