(Press-News.org) JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Cellular change thought to happen only in late-stage cancers to help tumors spread also occurs in early-stage lung cancer as a way to bypass growth controls, say researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida. The finding, reported in the July 11 issue of Science Translational Medicine, represents a new understanding of the extent of transformation that lung cancer — and likely many other tumor types — undergo early in disease development, the scientists say. They add that the discovery also points to a potential strategy to halt this process, known as epithelial-mesenchymal transition, or EMT.
"Our study points to EMT as a key step in lung cancer progression during the earliest stages of cancer development," says lead investigator and cancer biologist Derek Radisky, Ph.D.
"Normal cells recognize when they are dividing too rapidly, and turn on programs that block inappropriate cell division. Here we found that early-stage lung cancer cells switch on EMT in order to bypass these controls," he says.
The discovery could offer a new way to prevent progression to late-stage lung cancer, possibly by inhibiting a particular molecule from functioning, Dr. Radisky says.
Because EMT is a well-recognized late-stage transition that occurs in all sorts of solid tumors, the researchers say they believe that the same early-stage use of EMT they found in lung cancer is likely occurring in other cancers.
EMT is a biological process used in embryonic development to allow body development, which requires the ability of cells and tissues to morph from one type to another, and develop in an orchestrated fashion.
Late-stage cancer uses EMT to change tumor cells into a form that can migrate through blood.
"The gaps in our knowledge of lung cancer have not allowed us to develop more effective targeted therapies," Dr. Radisky says. "This study offers us great new clues for a new approach to treating lung and possibly other cancers as early as possible."
###Co-authors include researchers from Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.; University Hospital Giessen and Marburg in Germany; Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto; and the University of Colorado in Denver.
The study was funded by grants from the National Cancer Institute and the State of Florida's James & Esther King Biomedical Research Program.
About Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit worldwide leader in medical care, research and education for people from all walks of life. For more information, visit MayoClinic.com or MayoClinic.org/news.
About Mayo Clinic Cancer Center
As a leading institution funded by the National Cancer Institute, Mayo Clinic Cancer Center conducts basic, clinical and population science research, translating discoveries into improved methods for prevention, diagnosis, prognosis and therapy. For information on cancer clinical trials call 507-538-7623.
Mayo Clinic finds switch that lets early lung cancer grow unchecked
2012-07-12
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Global Budget Payment Model lowers medical spending, improves quality
2012-07-12
A new study suggests that global budgets for health care, an alternative to the traditional fee-for-service model of reimbursement, can slow the growth of medical spending and improve the quality of care for patients.
Researchers from Harvard Medical School's Department of Health Care Policy have analyzed claims data from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts's Alternative Quality Contract (AQC), a global budget program in which 11 health care provider organizations were given a budget to care for patients who use BCBSMA insurance. Such a model contrasts with widely ...
OxyContin formula change has many abusers switching to heroin
2012-07-12
AUDIO:
A change in the formula of a frequently abused prescription painkiller seems to have convinced many drug abusers to switch to a substance that’s potentially more dangerous. Washington university researchers...
Click here for more information.
A change in the formula of the frequently abused prescription painkiller OxyContin has many abusers switching to a drug that is potentially more dangerous, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in ...
First detailed timeline established for brain's descent into Alzheimer's
2012-07-12
Scientists have assembled the most detailed chronology to date of the human brain's long, slow slide into full-blown Alzheimer's disease.
The timeline, developed through research led by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, appears July 11 in The New England Journal of Medicine.
As part of an international research partnership known as the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer's Network (DIAN), scientists at Washington University and elsewhere evaluated a variety of pre-symptomatic markers of Alzheimer's disease in 128 subjects from families ...
Menopausal hormone therapy associated with increased blood pressure
2012-07-12
Menopausal hormone therapy use is associated with higher odds of high blood pressure, according to research published July 11 in the open access journal PLoS ONE. Longer hormone use was associated with further increased odds of high blood pressure, although this association decreased with subjects' ages.
The authors of the study, led by Joanne Lind of the University of Western Sydney, included 43,405 postmenopausal women in their study to identify the association.
As Dr. Lind explains, the study shows that "longer use of menopausal hormone therapy is associated with ...
It's not just lunch
2012-07-12
Sharing a meal with a former romantic partner is more likely than other, non-food-related activities to make your current partner jealous, according to a study published July 11 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.
The authors, led by Kevin Kniffin of Cornell University, asked undergraduate students to rate their jealousy in response to hypothetical scenarios involving their romantic partner engaging with a former partner, either by email, phone, coffee, or a meal. They found that a meal elicited the highest jealousy ratings, potentially pointing to the importance of ...
Personalized genomic medicine faces many hurdles
2012-07-12
When the human genome project was completed in 2003, some expected it to herald a new age of personalized genomic medicine, but the resulting single "reference" sequence has significant shortcomings for these applications and does not account for the actual variability in the human population, as reported in a study published July 11 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.
Using genomic data from a large number of individuals, the authors of the study, led by Todd Smith of PerkinElmer in Seattle, Washington, show that current genomic research resources and bioinformatics ...
Ancient domesticated remains are oldest in southern Africa
2012-07-12
Researchers have found evidence of the earliest known instance of domesticated caprines (sheep and goats) in southern Africa, dated to the end of the first millennium BC, providing new data to the ongoing debate about the origins of domestication and herding practices in this region. The full results are published July 11 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.
The researchers, led by David Pleurdeau of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris and Eugène Marais of the National Museum of Namibia, investigated remains from Leopard Cave in Namibia. They could not determine ...
Eye movement direction not correlated with lying
2012-07-12
New research refutes a commonly held belief that certain eye movements are associated with lying. The idea that looking to the right indicates lying, while looking left suggests truth telling, is shown to be false in a report published July 11 in the open access journal PLoS ONE. The researchers, led by Caroline Watt of the University of Edinburgh, completed three different studies to show that there was no correlation between the direction of eye movement and whether the subject was telling the truth or lying.
"A large percentage of the public believes that certain eye ...
ATP splitting in membrane protein dynamically measured for the first time
2012-07-12
Bochum, 11.7.2012
No. 242
Tracked step for step
ATP splitting in membrane protein dynamically measured for the first time
RUB researchers report in the Journal of Biological Chemistry
How a transport protein obtains its driving force from the energy storage molecule ATP, has been tracked dynamically by RUB researchers. Using time-resolved infrared spectroscopy, they measured the structural changes in the bacterial membrane protein MsbA and its interaction partner ATP. The researchers led by Prof. Dr. Eckhard Hofmann and Prof. Dr. Klaus Gerwert from the Biophysics ...
Silver nanoparticle synthesis using strawberry tree leaf
2012-07-12
A team of researchers from Greece and Spain have managed to synthesize silver nanoparticles, which are of great interest thanks to their application in biotechnology, by using strawberry tree leaf extract. The new technology is ecological, simple, cheap and very fast.
Strawberry tree leaf (Arbutus unedo) and silver nitrate (AgNO3). With just these two ingredients scientists can now produce silver nanoparticles, a material that is used in advanced technologies from compounds for distributing medicines through to electronic devices, catalysts, contaminant solvents.
The ...