Researchers Seek to Disable Cancer Cells

In the world of genetic mutation, the cancer cell is pretty dysfunctional.

Because of their virulent nature, most of us think of cancer cells as voracious, pac-man-like entities that destroy everything in their paths while simultaneously remaining impervious to anything that threatens them, continually fortifying themselves along the way.

But cancer cells, says Dr. Stephen Elledge of Harvard Medical School, are “sick cells” that have “needed to make compromises along the way.” In other words, they need some semblance of order to be able to keep up their chaotic existence.

A new field of research is focusing on the aberrant genes cancer cells need to survive – and destroying them. Harvard Medical School and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have discovered a genetic process that is unique to tumors; specifically, a mutation that keeps cancer cells from killing themselves when they are supposed to.

The gene, coined STK33, prevents cancer cells from self destructing; Stephen Elledge, lead author of the study, says that total annihilation of STK33 wouldn’t even be necessary for success. A drug targeting the gene would only need a 50-70% “knockdown rate” because of the weakened state cancer cells are in, when compared to normal, healthy cells.

The Harvard study isn’t the first one to shed light on the chaotic world of the cancer cell. The journal Genome Research reported on a study out of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston several months ago. Researchers focused on the genome of a breast cancer cell as compared to a normal healthy cell. They discovered a total of 157 gene re-arrangements that are actually possible in a cancer cell.

Such rearrangements, according to the researchers, have the ability to degrade the cells’ regulatory systems, sending them into a turbulent tailspin, especially if they become separated from the DNA that controls their activity.

(By Rachel Stockton, and edited by Heather Kelley)