(Press-News.org)
Around 320,000 new cases of leukaemia, a type of blood cancer that can affect all population groups, are diagnosed every year in Europe. In children, cases of leukaemia make up a third of diagnosed cancers. Chemotherapy is the main treatment for leukaemia. Often, the exact cause cannot be identified and the molecular and cellular mechanisms responsible for leukaemia remain shrouded in mystery. Discovering new detection methods and new treatments to eradicate leukaemia is therefore a major challenge in oncology.
Messenger RNA has been in the news in recent months, in connection with COVID-19 vaccinations. In an article published in Molecular Cell, researchers from the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and the Bordet Institute, Brussels University Hospital (Hôpital universitaire de Bruxelles – H.U.B.) are opening another equally innovative avenue of research: novel anti-cancer therapies using the complex alphabet of messenger RNA (or RNA epigenetics).
As with DNA, along with its 4 well-known letters (A, U, G, C), RNA's chemical make-up also includes additional letters. This is the case for the letter m5C, or methylation of messenger RNA, which plays an essential role in gene regulation through the reading of m5C by proteins that bind to it, called “readers”. These m5C readers have still not been described in detail and their role in cancer is unknown.
The recent work of the team led by Prof. François Fuks – Director of the Laboratory of Cancer Epigenetics, ULB Faculty of Medicine and Bordet Institute H.U.B. and Director of the ULB Cancer Research Center (U-CRC), Université libre de Bruxelles – has identified a new RNA reader, SRSF2. For the first time, it is shedding light on the SRSF2 protein’s key role in the development of leukaemia.
The SRSF2 gene is one of the most frequently mutated genes in leukaemia cases: up to 50% in certain types of leukaemia. The researchers demonstrated that the SRSF2 protein reads the m5C modification in RNA; they also highlighted a previously unsuspected molecular mechanism that can lead to leukaemia: the mutation of SRSF2 alters its ability to read m5C in RNA, which inhibits its function of regulating messenger RNA. Furthermore, by analysing nearly 700 samples taken from leukaemia patients, Prof. François Fuks and his colleagues were able to identify a new group of patients whose chances of survival are particularly low due to the reduced ability of SRSF2 to read m5C.
This research, which is part of a boom in discoveries in the field of the RNA alphabet, was published on 7 December 2023 in the journal Molecular Cell.
These discoveries should not only begin a new chapter of knowledge in our understanding of why leukaemia appears, but should also lead us to a new paradigm in the diagnosis and treatment of leukaemia, based on the epigenetics of RNA. In concrete terms, the discoveries could lead to specific diagnoses of patients with a poor vital prognosis, in whom the “m5C reader” function of SRSF2 is affected. Moreover, a new therapeutic approach to leukaemia could be envisaged by developing an inhibitor that could help SRSF2 to read m5C correctly again, as this reading ability is reduced in patients with the SRSF2 mutation.
The work is supported by the F.N.R.S, Télévie, Welbio, the Fondation contre le Cancer, an ARC, the Fondation ULB and Wallonia
Scientific contact :
François Fuks
Laboratory of Cancer Epigenetics, Faculty de Medicine ULB and Bordet Institute H.U.B.
Mail : mailto:francois.fuks@ulb.be
END
ITHACA, N.Y. – A new study of paper wasps suggests social interactions may make animals smarter. The research offers behavioral evidence of an evolutionary link between the ability to recognize individuals and social cooperation.
Furthermore, genomic sequencing revealed that populations of wasps that recognized each other – and cooperated more – showed recent adaptations (positive selection) in areas of the brain associated with cognitive abilities such as learning, memory and vision.
The study focused on two distinct populations of paper wasps (Polistes fuscatus): A southern ...
Key to fatty liver disease and its consequences for billions of people
The global rise in obesity and diabetes is leading to an epidemic in fatty liver disease affecting 20-30 per cent of the world’s population. Almost a third of people with fatty liver disease go on to develop an advanced form of the disease, known as non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) that can progress to cirrhosis and end-stage liver disease, or even liver cancer, and is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease.
Why some people remain relatively healthy with fatty liver disease and some go onto potentially life-threatening illness has been a mystery. Until now.
A study ...
From the 1950s to the 1970s, a Colombian priest named Padre Gustavo Huertas collected rocks and fossils near a town called Villa de Levya. Two of the specimens he found were small, round rocks patterned with lines that looked like leaves; he classified them as a type of fossil plant. But in a new study, published in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica, researchers re-examined these “plant” fossils and found that they weren’t plants at all: they were the fossilized remains of baby turtles.
“It was truly surprising to find these fossils,” says Héctor Palma-Castro, a paleobotany student at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
The plants in question ...
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), that arises from pancreatic epithelial cells, is the most common form of pancreatic cancer, with a very high mortality rate. This elevated mortality is associated with the unique tumor microenvironment (TME), known for increased resistance to chemotherapy and high metastatic potential. TME is characterized by the presence of a complex stromal structure comprising cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), tumor endothelial cells (TECs), and a variety of immune cells.
CAFs are specific cells, primarily involved in the overall aggressiveness and spread of cancer cells. These cells can further be categorized into several types based on their ...
DALLAS, December 7, 2023 — The Tobacco Endgame — the path to ending tobacco use and nicotine addiction in the U.S. — is within sight, but there has been a sharp increase in electronic cigarette use among high school students, from 1.5% in 2011 to about 27.4% in 2019.[1]
The American Heart Association, the world’s leading nonprofit organization focused on heart and brain health for all, is collaborating with the Association for the Treatment of Tobacco Use and Dependence (ATTUD) to change that. New individual certification as a Certified Professional by the American Heart Association – Tobacco Treatment is ...
A multidisciplinary study led by the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Spain (a joint center of the Spanish National Research Council and Pompeu Fabra University), the University of Belgrade in Serbia, the University of Western Ontario in Canada, and Harvard University in the USA, reconstructs the genomic history of the Balkan Peninsula during the first millennium of the common era, a time and place of profound demographic, cultural and linguistic change. The team has recovered and analyzed whole genome data from 146 ancient people excavated primarily from Serbia and Croatia—more than a third of which came from the ...
Despite the Roman Empire’s extensive military and cultural influence on the nearby Balkan peninsula, a DNA analysis of individuals who lived in the region between 1 and 1000 CE found no genetic evidence of Iron Age Italian ancestry. Instead, a study published December 7 in the journal Cell revealed successive waves of migrations from Western Anatolia, central and northern Europe, and the Pontic-Kazakh Steppe during the Empire’s reign.
From the 7th century CE onwards (coincident with the fall of the Western Roman Empire), large numbers of people emigrated from Eastern Europe, likely related to the arrival of Slavic-speaking populations, which ...
Chemotherapy becomes less effective because healthy cells push cancer cells to grow more slowly, according to two studies from researchers at UCL and Yale.
In the two studies, supported by Cancer Research UK and published in Cell, researchers used ‘mini-tumours’ and the latest single-cell analysis technologies to begin to solve the puzzle of why healthy cells in a patient’s bowel cancer tumour might lead to poor outcomes.
Bowel cancer kills over 900,000 people a year and is the second highest cause of cancer mortality worldwide. In the UK, it accounts for 10% of all cancer deaths.
In the first study, UCL researchers used the latest single-cell analysis ...
WHO: Mass General Brigham researchers, Dr. Chirag Vyas and Dr. Olivia I. Okereke at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Dr. Howard Sesso and Dr. JoAnn Manson at Brigham and Women’s Hospital
WHAT: Cocoa extract has shown a potential protective effect on cognition but randomized clinical trials in older adults have had inconsistent results. A new study of cognition in a randomized trial, known as the Cocoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS), suggests that taking cocoa extract supplements containing 500 mg per day of cocoa flavanols had cognitive benefits for older adults who had lower habitual ...
CLEVELAND—A groundbreaking study by researchers at Case Western Reserve University suggests a class of medications used to treat type 2 diabetes may also reduce the risk of colorectal cancer (CRC).
The findings, published today (Dec. 7) in the journal JAMA Oncology, support the need for clinical trials to determine whether these medications could prevent one of the deadliest types of cancers. Eventually, the medications may also show promise in warding off other types of cancer associated with obesity and diabetes.
“Our results clearly demonstrate ...
