WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- breast cancer cells use cholesterol to develop tolerance to stress, making them impervious to death as they migrate from the original tumor site, according to research by Duke University Medical Center.
Senior author Donald P. McDonnell, Ph.D said that most cancer cells die as they try to metastasize , however , he believes the few that don’t die have the ability to overcome the cell’s stress-induced death mechanism and that it was discovered that cholesterol was integral in fueling this ability.
McDonnell and colleagues built on earlier research in their lab focusing on the link between high cholesterol and estrogen-positive breast and gynecological cancers. Those studies found that cancers fueled by the estrogen hormone benefitted from derivatives of cholesterol that act like estrogen, stoking cancer growth.
But in the what-doesn’t-kill-you-makes-you-stronger motif, those that live emerge with a super-power that makes them able to withstand ferroptosis, a natural process in which cells succumb to stress. These stress-impervious cancer cells then proliferate and readily metastasize.