(Press-News.org) A molecule thought to limit cell proliferation also helps cancer cells survive during initial tumor formation and when the wayward cells spread to other organs in the body, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine have found.
The study was published in the May 31 issue of Nature.
The new study seems to contradict earlier findings that activation of the enzyme, called AMP-activated protein kinase, or AMPK, inhibits the growth of cells in culture.
Because of its role in inhibiting cancer cell growth and proliferation, AMPK has been viewed as a promising potential target for developing new chemotherapy drugs, says Nissim Hay, professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at UIC and principle investigator on the study.
But Hay and his colleagues found that when the cell is under metabolic stress, AMPK is activated to promote cell survival and prevent cell death.
"Paradoxically, activated AMPK is actually required for the survival of the cancer cell during metabolic stress, when glucose uptake is decreased," Hay said. Cancer cells are subjected to metabolic stress when they first leave the cell matrix to form a solid tumor, and again when they migrate out of the tumor to spread throughout the body.
The researchers found that AMPK promotes the survival of cancer cells by indirectly regulating NADPH, a molecule that reduces harmful reactive-oxygen species. They showed that AMPK exerts it effect by regulating enzymes that control fatty acid synthesis and fatty acid oxidation.
The new study may also help to explain a previous unexpected finding: that cells that are deficient in AMPK, or in another enzyme that is responsible for activating AMPK, called LKB1, are resistant to becoming cancerous. Patients with Peuta-Jeghers syndrome, an inherited deficiency of LKB1, develop only benign tumors incapable of spreading.
AMPK, through its role in limiting proliferation, may still offer a promising target for chemotherapy, Hay said, but it would be important to target the fatty acid synthesis enzymes at the same time in order to block AMPK's protective effect.
The study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health; the Chicago Biomedical Consortium with support from The Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust; and the Diabetes Research and Training Center at the University of Chicago.
Sang-Min Jeon, former UIC graduate student, is first author on the study. He is now on staff at Genetech in San Francisco. Navdeep Chandel, professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Northwestern University, also contributed to the study.
INFORMATION:
[Editors note: images available at newsphoto.lib.uic.edu/v/Hay/hay.jpg.html. ]
For more information about the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System,
visit www.hospital.uillinois.edu
END
Need to do some serious multitasking? Some training in meditation beforehand could make the work smoother and less stressful, new research from the University of Washington shows.
Work by UW Information School professors David Levy and Jacob Wobbrock suggests that meditation training can help people working with information stay on tasks longer with fewer distractions and also improves memory and reduces stress.
Their paper was published in the May edition of Proceedings of Graphics Interface.
Levy, a computer scientist, and Wobbrock, a researcher in human-computer ...
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — A new study by researchers at the UC Davis MIND Institute suggests that women who consume the recommended daily dosage of folic acid, the synthetic form of folate or vitamin B-9, during the first month of pregnancy may have a reduced risk of having a child with autism.
The study furthers the researchers' earlier investigations, which found that women who take prenatal vitamins around the time of conception have a reduced risk of having a child with autism. The current study sought to determine whether the folic acid consumed in those supplements ...
SANTA BARBARA, CA (June 14, 2012) A ten-year NIH-funded study has determined that a third of infants with prolonged seizures and fever suffer from either a new or reactivated roseola virus infection. Roseola viruses are the cause of the common childhood rash, but can also cause limbic encephalitis, a condition that frequently progresses to epilepsy. Investigators discovered one of the roseola viruses, human herpesvirus-6B (HHV-6B) in the blood of 32% of 169 infants with prolonged seizures, a condition known as status epilepticus. They found HHV-7 (another roseola virus) ...
SALT LAKE CITY, June 14, 2012 – In Israel's Negev Desert, a plant called sweet mignonette or taily weed uses a toxic "mustard oil bomb" to make the spiny mouse spit out the plant's seeds when eating the fruit. Thus, the plant has turned a seed-eating rodent into a seed spreader that helps the plant reproduce, says a new study by Utah and Israeli scientists.
"It's fascinating that these little mice are doing analytical chemistry, assaying the fruit for toxic compounds" and learning not to bite into the seed, says Denise Dearing, a coauthor of the study and professor ...
WASHINGTON – Cyclists in Washington, D.C. who use Capital Bikeshare for their daily commutes are much less likely to wear helmets than commuters on their own bikes. That is the finding from an observational study conducted by Georgetown University School of Nursing & Health Studies (NHS) researchers that compares the rate of helmet use of casual and commuting Bikeshare riders with private cyclists. The research was published today in the American Journal of Public Health.
Bike sharing is a popular option for transportation in the interest of personal fitness and environmental ...
Highlights
Homeless kidney disease patients suffer from much higher rates of depression and substance abuse and are more likely to develop kidney failure and die prematurely than impoverished patients with stable housing.
Homeless kidney disease patients are also far more likely to use costly emergency medical services.
Washington, DC (June 14, 2012) — Among patients with moderate to advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD), homeless people experience higher rates of premature death and kidney failure, and they use emergency services much more often than impoverished ...
BETHESDA, MD – June 14, 2012 -- A new spin to our understanding of the relationship between Alzheimer's disease and diabetes, which could point to a therapeutic target for both diseases, is published in a research report in the June 2012 issue of the journal Genetics. In the report, scientists from City College of New York-City University of New York (CCNY-CUNY) show that a gene in the worm Caenorhabditis elegans, which is similar to a human gene correlated with Alzheimer's disease, is involved in multiple metabolic pathways, including the insulin pathway.
"Mutations ...
The practice of cave art in Europe thus began up to 10,000 years earlier than previously thought, indicating the paintings were created either by the first anatomically modern humans in Europe or, perhaps, by Neanderthals.
Fifty paintings in 11 caves in Northern Spain, including the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Altamira, El Castillo and Tito Bustillo, were dated by a team of UK, Spanish and Portuguese researchers led by Dr Alistair Pike of the University of Bristol, UK.
As traditional methods such as radiocarbon dating don't work where there is no organic pigment, ...
RIO: World leaders have made pitiful progress on their guarantee to protect global oceans from overfishing and other threats.
In a paper published today (Friday 15th June) in Science, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and world renowned researchers have reviewed commitments made by governments to protect the world's oceans and shown that there has been little success over the past 20 years.
At the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, heads of 192 governments came together to agree on key issues - including targets for protecting vulnerable species ...
Contact: Ellen Wilson
ewilson@burnesscommunications.com
301-280-5723
Preeti Singh
psingh@burnesscommunications.com
301-280-5722
Burness Communications
New report: Unlikely alliances bringing back dead rivers, barren landscapes, and farm yields
Approach reducing conflict over land, water in Brazil's Atlantic Forest, Sub-Saharan Africa and in dozens of other regions; major agriculture groups call for urgently scaling up 'whole landscape' approaches ahead of Rio+20
WASHINGTON, DC (14 JUNE 2012)—An unconventional approach that involves building alliances between ...
