Discovery sheds light on how cancer cells can protect themselves

Researchers in Sydney have found that cancer cells can repair DNA by using “cables” in the nucleus. The findings open up new possibilities for designing future cancer treatments.

Researchers at the Children’s Medical Research Institute (CMRI) in Westmead, Sydney, cancer The cells and how they utilize the “cables” in the cell’s nucleus to support DNA repair and replication.

The results of this survey are available today Nature cell biologyHelps stimulate efforts to create new tailor-made therapies to kill cancer cells.

Dr. Noah Lam, the project’s chief scientist, was urged to become a cancer researcher after his mother died of illness. She spent more than four years on this discovery, revealing unexpected features. Protein actin.. Actin is a well-known protein that interacts with another protein called myosin to contract muscles. Actin also forms cables within the cell and connects them to act like building girders, contributing to the structure and shape of the cell.

Dr. Lam is a member of the University of Sydney School of Medicine and Health team.

Scientists have known for decades that actin plays this important role in the body of the cell, but its role in the nucleus, the cell’s control center, is controversial. ..

In order for cancer to grow, cancer cells need to make many new copies of themselves. Each time this happens, the DNA in the nucleus of the cancer cell needs to be replicated.

It was unclear whether actin played a role in DNA replication, but Dr. Lam describes his previous work as a PhD. Students suggested that actin may have unexpected nuclear function. Her new study showed that this premonition was correct.

DNA replication in cancer cells is like an old car running at maximum speed. It often breaks down and needs to be restarted. Cancer chemotherapy takes advantage of this weakness in cancer cells by destroying the process more often in an attempt to destroy them.

Dr. Lam discovered that when cancer cells have problems with DNA replication, actin cables form in the nucleus. This changes the shape of the nucleus, increasing the ability of cancer cells to repair their DNA and resume the replication process.

Using an advanced super-resolution microscope, researchers have shown that damaged DNA slides along the actin network and moves to regions within the nucleus where repairs are most efficient.Scientists were previously unaware of cancer cell I protected myself in this way.Critically, this study found that actin performed and helped these unexpected functions in response to treatment with chemotherapy. cancer cell Resist the treatment.

Dr. Lam believes that this finding has two ways to help cancer patients. First, treatments that negate the actin cable mechanism can kill cancers that are already difficult to maintain high DNA replication rates.Second, add interfering treatments Actin Cables to commonly used chemotherapy increase the success rate.

Part of Dr. Lam’s motivation to become a cancer researcher stems from her own personal story. Her mother died of cancer when she was young.

“Especially when I was a kid, it was very difficult to see the person you loved and depended on die, and there was nothing you could do about it,” she said.

Now she is excited to find a new approach to treating cancer.

“Science is very creative. Two scientists don’t ask the exact same question, so it feels like you’re doing something no one else is doing,” Dr. Lam said. ..

“It’s exciting to understand what wasn’t known before. I’m very much looking forward to this being a big step forward, as all progress begins with basic discoveries.”