Disrupt the mechanism by which tumors bone marrow “manipulate” at cells healthy to be able to spread, is the axis of a new study that raises the use of protein inhibitor drugs to cut off that communication and stop the metastasis.
The research focuses on metastasis from neuroblastoma, the most common solid tumor in infants and children, and has just been published in the scientific journal “Nature Communications”.
The study is based on the fact that cancer cells manipulate healthy cells in their environment to prevent them not only from fighting the tumor, but also to support its growth.
The analyzes showed that monocytes – immune cells that are formed in the bone marrow and activated to attack the tumor – react to cancer cells by releasing cytokines, proteins that promote cancer growth.
“These monocytes receive mixed messages and don’t know what to do, as it appears that cancer cells are manipulating them.”explains in a press release Sabine Taschner-Mandl, from the Children’s Hospital of Santa Ana, in Vienna, who has directed the research together with Nikolaus Fortelny, from the University of Salzburg.
This process can be reversed, say the scientists, with drugs that inhibit the two most important proteins through which both types of cells exchange information.
In this way, the communication pathways between cancer cells and healthy ones are cut and monocytes would be kept away from the bad influence of their environment and, therefore, it would be difficult for metastasis to develop.
This represents a novelty in the way of analyzing neuroblastoma metastasis.
“Until now, only primary tumors have been studied in such detail, but not neuroblastoma metastases”says Irfete Fetahu, one of the study’s authors.
Neuroblastoma is a disease in which malignant cells form in the neuroblast, a nerve tissue found in the adrenal glands, neck, chest, or spinal cord.
Neuroblastoma is usually diagnosed between the first month of life and five years of age, and is found when the tumor begins to grow and cause symptoms including a mass in the abdomen, neck, or chest and pain in the neck. bones.
Sometimes it forms before birth and is found during an ultrasound, although most of the time when it is diagnosed, the cancer has already spread.
Source: EFE
Source: Gestion
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