New Way to Slow Cancer Cell Growth

Date: 26 May 2017 - 20:23

News ID: ۳۹۹۶۷

NEW YORK (Dispatches)-Researchers have identified a new way to potentially slow the fast-growing cells that characterize all types of cancer.
By removing a specific protein from cells, researchers from the University of Rochester's Center for RNA Biology were able to slow the cell cycle, which is out of control in cancer. The findings were made in kidney and cervical cancer cells in the laboratory and are a long way from being applied in people. But, they could be the basis of a treatment option in the future.
Researchers identified a protein called Tudor-SN that is important in the "preparatory" phase of the cell cycle -- the period when the cell gets ready to divide. When scientists eliminated this protein from cells, using the gene editing technology CRISPR-Cas9, cells took longer to gear up for division. The loss of Tudor-SN slowed the cell cycle.
"We know that Tudor-SN is more abundant in cancer cells than healthy cells, and our study suggests that targeting this protein could inhibit fast-growing cancer cells," said Reyad A. Elbarbary, Ph.D., lead study author and research assistant professor in the Center for RNA Biology and the department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry.
Elbarbary, who works in the laboratory of senior study author Lynne E. Maquat, Ph.D., an expert in RNA biology, adds that there are existing compounds that block Tudor-SN that could be good candidates for a possible therapy.