NanomedicineCenter.com

Killer transporter can destroy breast cancer cells

Pyruvate, a metabolite in the blood, is lethal to rapidly-multiplying cells, such as cancer. Transporters bring substances like pyruvate inside cells. Now, since breast cancer cells (or any other cancer cells in general) won’t let pyruvate in, scientists from the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine looked to a healthy group of rapidly-dividing breast cells that do let in a similar killer.
“If we can figure out how to do that, we could have a new therapeutic target for fighting breast cancer,” says Dr. Thangaraju Muthusamy, one of the researchers.

They looked at a principle present in the breastfeeding process. In order to allow milk production, the tissue must increase in size. When the breastfeeding stops, milk accumulates, and butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid similar to pyruvate, starts getting inside the cells. The size of breast is reduced and lactation is stopped via this process known as involution.
“The normal expansion of breast tissue during lactation is similar to breast cancer when tumors grow and multiply,” said Dr. Muthusamy. “But the cell death that occurs in normal breast tissue during involution does not occur in breast cancer. Tumor cells are smart; they silence the transporter to avoid death. No transporter means no pyruvate is getting into the cells.”

The research is funded by the National Cancer Institute, which granted over two million for this research. Hopefully, they will be able to make cancer cells to express the transporter and let the pyruvate inside.

Source: mcg.edu

How cancer survives in the human body

In order to survive, cancer cells need to feed themselves. It’s a known fact that they use blood sugar to produce energy, but how they get other nutrients is not known. However, scientists from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have discovered how the Myc cancer-promoting gene uses microRNAs to control the use of glutamine, a major energy source. These discoveries could help scientists to create a new way of treatment and perhaps stop the disease.

“While we were looking for how Myc promotes cancer growth, it was unexpected to find that Myc can increase use of glutamine by cancer cells,” says Chi V. Dang, Ph.D., one of the researchers. “This surprising discovery only came about after scientists from several disciplines came together across Hopkins to collaborate — it was a real team effort.”

Scientists started to explore how how Myc promotes cancer. Then they brought in collaborators — protein experts, and examined the proteins in the mitochondria. They found 8 proteins that were “on” in response to Myc. The first one on the list was glutaminase (which processes glutamine). After that, researchers found out that cancer cells without GLS grew much slower, while those with GLS grew much faster.
“In the near future, we plan to study GLS in mice to see if removing it can slow or stop cancer growth,” said Ping Gao, Ph.D., one of the researchers. “If we know how cancer cells differ from normal cells in how they make energy and use nutrients, we can identify new pathways to target for designing drugs with fewer side effects.”

The project was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Rita Allen Foundation, the National Cancer Institute, the Sol Goldman Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research, and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Source: hopkinsmedicine.org

Nanoparticles aren’t toxic at small sizes

Scientists from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Chicago have performed a research whose outcome gave the opportunity to experts to conclude that the finest nanoparticles, which are widely used in nanomedicine and bioengineering, aren’t really toxic. This should definitely calm some scientists who claimed that human tissues might react inadequate if exposed to small nanoparticles.

Researchers from Chicago, led by Brian Thrall, discovered that size doesn’t matter. “If you consider surface area as the dose metric, then you get similar types of responses independent of the size of the particle,” said Thrall. “That suggests the chemistry that drives the biological responses doesn’t change when you get down to the smallest nanoparticle.”

In general, it’s very hard to measure toxicity — some measure it by total weight, some by the number of particles. “Different dose metrics give different impressions of which particles are more toxic,” said Thrall. “We measured the dose at which the particles caused a biological response. That was either death of the cell, or a change in which genes the cell turned on and off. In the end, we found out that the biological response was very similar regardless of the size of the nanoparticles.”

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Source: pnl.gov/aaas/

Biotechnology will boom in the coming years

Scientists have gathered at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Chicago this week, and concluded that the huge potential of biotechnology still remains unused. They predict that biotechnology will boom in coming years.
“What you have seen over the last 35 years of biotech are tremendous applications, immediate applications of biotech starting with recombinant therapeutics all the way through,” said Drew Endy from Stanford University.

The main reason that experts think biotech will expand is the fact that no one thus far has even “scratched the surface” of the promising science.