Cancer cells need normalcy to survive chaos they create

Friday May 29, 2009 (foodconsumer.org) -- New research conducted by Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital verifies that cancer cells are reliant on normal cells to survive. In order to maintain their malignant status, they must counteract the stress caused by the fact that they are anomalies within the human body. Failure to do that means certain death for the cancer cell.

Who knew? Many of us visualize cancer cells as an insatiable presence that simply destroys everything in its path, relying on nothing but its own malignant deviance to survive.

Indeed, if it was that simple, a cure for cancer would have been discovered decades ago; 4, to be exact. The 1960s was when Dr. Judah Folkman developed a theory that by discerning how cancer cells grow, researchers would eventually be able to “outsmart” the malignant tumors by attacking the environment in which they survive.

Although researchers concur that Folkman was on the right track, his theory didn’t account for something that scientists have been scrambling to understand: gene mutation. Similar to viruses, cancer cells learn to compensate for treatments that threaten to undo them. As an example, researchers developed Gleevac, a treatment which targets the abnormal gene responsible for chronic myeloid leukemia. However, Gleevac and other cocktails have met with fierce resistance in some cases; something that is directly attributable to gene mutation.

But the Harvard study may be another huge stride in the proverbial “race for the cure.” Lead authors Ji Luo and Stephen Elledge have determined that cancer cells need “equal parts vice and virtue” to maintain their deviant state. The havoc they wreak causes them stress; they need some semblance of cell normalcy to thrive.

For the last several years, the American Cancer Society has recommended that women newly diagnosed with breast cancer undergo testing for the presence of a certain protein that promotes cancer cell growth. Called “tumor markers,” these proteins are found in the blood and urine of cancer patients.

Drs. Luo and Elledge are hopeful that by determining what proteins cancer cells are reliant on for their survival, the medical community will be able to create drug cocktails that will inhibit those very proteins necessary for their continued presence within the body.

(By Rachel Stockton, and edited by Heather Kelley)