Metabolic profiles essential for personalizing cancer therapy
2012-02-08
(Press-News.org) One way to tackle a tumor is to take aim at the metabolic reactions that fuel their growth. But a report in the February Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press Publication, shows that one metabolism-targeted cancer therapy will not fit all. That means that metabolic profiling will be essential for defining each cancer and choosing the best treatment accordingly, the researchers say.
The evidence comes from studies in mice showing that tumors' metabolic profiles vary based on the genes underlying a particular cancer and on the tissue of origin.
"Cancer research is dominated now by genomics and the hope that genetic fingerprints will allow us to guide therapy," said J. Michael Bishop of the University of California, San Francisco. "The issue is whether that is sufficient. We argue that it isn't because metabolic changes are complex and hard to predict. You may need to have the metabolome as well as the genome."
Just as a cancer genome refers to the complete set of genes, the metabolome refers to the complete set of metabolites in a given tumor.
The altered metabolism of tumors has been considered a target for anticancer therapy. For instance, tumors and cancer cell lines consume more glucose than normal cells do, a phenomenon known as the Warburg effect. There has often been the impression that such changes in metabolism are characteristic of cancers in general, but cancer is a genetically heterogeneous disease. The team led by Bishop and Mariia Yuneva wondered how metabolism might vary with the underlying genetic causes of cancer.
They found in mice that liver cancers driven by different cancer-causing genes (Myc versus Met) show differences in the metabolism of two major nutrients: glucose and glutamine. What's more, the metabolism of Myc-induced lung tumors is different from Myc-induced liver tumors.
"Our work shows that different tumors can have very different metabolisms," Yuneva said. "You can't generalize."
Bishop and Yuneva say their findings also highlight glutamine metabolism as a potential new target for therapy in some tumors, noting that the focus has been primarily on glucose metabolism. Interestingly, the data shows that a version of a glutaminase enzyme normally found in kidney cells turns up in cancerous liver cells. That means there might be a way to attack the metabolism of the cancer without damaging normal liver tissue.
"We shouldn't lose sight of the rather immediate therapeutic potential," Bishop said.
The researchers will continue to inventory metabolic variation in mouse models. Ultimately, they say it will be important to catalogue the metabolic variation in the much more complex, human setting.
INFORMATION: END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2012-02-08
Contrary to current convention by which infection with the organism Clostridium difficile is regarded as an infection that is acquired by contact with symptomatic patients known to be infected with C. difficile, these may account for only a minority of new cases of the infection. These findings are important as they indicate that C. difficile infection, which can be fatal especially in older people, may not be effectively controlled by current hospital infection strategies.
In a study led by Professor Tim Peto of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, UK, and published ...
2012-02-08
In low- and middle-income countries, mild cognitive impairment—an intermediate state between normal signs of cognitive aging, such as becoming increasingly forgetful, and dementia, which may or may not progress—is consistently associated with higher disability and with neuropsychiatric symptoms but not with most socio-demographic factors, according to a large study published in this week's PLoS Medicine.
The established 10/66 Dementia Research Group interviewed approximately 15 000 people over 65 years of age who did not have dementia in eight low- and middle-incomes ...
2012-02-08
Online parcel delivery specialist Parcel2Go has applauded the drive and will to succeed of the thousands of people across the UK who decide to start their own businesses. In the face of rising unemployment across Britain and the threat of a double-dip recession, entrepreneurs of all kinds are grasping the opportunity to take control of their own future.
Figures released last month by the Office for National Statistics showed the number of people registered as self-employed in the UK increased by 101,000 during the three months to November 2011, representing a 3.5 per ...
2012-02-08
Edward Mills of the University of Ottawa, Canada and colleagues argue in this week's PLoS Medicine that the HIV/AIDS response in Africa needs a more balanced approach to gender, so that both men and women are involved in HIV treatment and prevention. Traditionally, targeted efforts at reducing the impact of the HIV epidemic have focused on women and children while men have received considerably less attention.
The authors say: "The epidemiological evidence is accumulating, and indicates that males in sub-Saharan Africa are not accessing HIV services as often as their ...
2012-02-08
The average person in the UK has had their main bank account for more than 20 years, according to new research from Halifax.
In figures that demonstrate the average person's reluctance to move bank account providers, the bank found that:
- 1 in 10 adults still use the account that they opened between the ages of 1 and 15 years old as their main account today
- A third of adults opened their main current account between the ages of 16-24
- Over a quarter of people (26%) have held their current main account for more than 26 years
Parent and student account define ...
2012-02-08
CHICAGO – Administration of routine infant immunizations with a vaccine for serogroup B Neisseria meningitidis, a bacterium that is a cause of serious disease such as sepsis and meningitis, was effective against meningococcal strains and produced minimal interference with the response to the routine vaccinations, according to a study in the February 8 issue of JAMA.
Certain serogroup B Neisseria meningitidis (MenB) vaccines proved effective in clinical trials and controlled a clonal MenB outbreak in New Zealand; however, the high strain specificity of these vaccines ...
2012-02-08
CHICAGO – Among postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer, increasing age was associated with a higher risk of death from breast cancer, according to a study in the February 8 issue of JAMA.
"Breast cancer is the leading contributor to cancer incidence and cancer mortality in women worldwide, with 1,383,500 new cases in 2008. In the United States in 2008, 41 percent of these women were aged 65 years or older at diagnosis. Because breast cancer incidence increases with increasing age, changing demographics and continuously increasing life expectancy ...
2012-02-08
CHICAGO – Although some data have suggested a possible increased risk of intussusception (when a portion of the small or large intestine slides forward into itself, like a telescope) after administration of the pentavalent rotavirus vaccine in infants, an analysis that included almost 800,000 doses administered to U.S. infants found no increased risk of this condition following vaccination, according to a study in the February 8 issue of JAMA.
"In 1999, the rhesus tetravalent rotavirus vaccine (RRV, Rotashield) was withdrawn from the U.S. market due to a significantly ...
2012-02-08
CHICAGO – Short-term use of the antibiotic cefpodoxime for the treatment of women with uncomplicated cystitis (bladder infection) did not meet criteria for noninferiority for achieving clinical cure compared with ciprofloxacin, a drug in the fluoroquinolone class of antibiotics for which there have been concerns about overuse and a resulting increase in resistance rates, according to a study in the February 8 issue of JAMA. The criteria for noninferiority was if the efficacy of cefpodoxime had been shown to be within a pre-specified margin of 10 percent of the efficacy ...
2012-02-08
For all those who have wondered where they'd be without their mothers, a study reported in the February Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication, puts a whole new spin on the question. Mice whose mothers pass along a mutant copy of a single imprinted gene can't keep themselves warm and die soon after leaving the comfort of the nest. The findings also reveal that the babies require a second round of heat-generating brown fat to survive.
"When that second wave is delayed, it gets them in the end," said Anne Ferguson-Smith of the University of Cambridge.
The findings ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Metabolic profiles essential for personalizing cancer therapy
