Researching Cancer

Cancer is the number two leading cause of death, and more than half a million people this year alone will die from it. Small wonder then that medical research into cures and diagnosis of cancer has exploded in the last 20 years, all searching not only for a cure, but for ways to prevent this deadly condition. While as few as 15 years ago, a diagnosis of cancer was a death sentence, we've come a long way since then, and many types of cancer can be treated either though pharmaceuticals, or surgical procedures. Neither of these methods however, are foolproof, and the medical researchers still constantly search for the holy grails in the battle against cancer: early detection, and methods of prevention.

The topic we will discuss, Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transitions, falls into the latter category, and addresses the most dangerous stage of cancer development, where cancer cells have mutated so far that they lose their identity and adhesion to surrounding cells, and migrate freely through the body, until they finally reach a new location and begin their deadly cycle of cancerous growth again. The mechanisms that cancer uses to perform this feat have been uncovered to be several of the same mechanisms that we use during embryonic development, in order to organize cells into tissues, and eventually to determine the fate of cells, and allow the developing embryo to progress to become a fetus.

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During cancerous mutation, cells can often trigger these developmental pathways, which lie dormant in adults. The proteins thus created can suppress or alter the function of the cell, causing it to lose control of its mitotic cycle, and later to lose it's identity and travel independently throughout the body of the afflicted patient. Along with the mutation of other proteins, especially those involving DNA error-checking, these mutations create foreign invaders from our own tissues, which the body has little defense against.

These transitions allow cells to escape from a single cancerous tumor, into the blood stream to migrate freely, spreading cancer throughout the patients body. Neither the patients immune defense, nor medical science has any way to treat this cancerous explosion. Stopping the disease before these deadly transitions then, is the first step to treating and curing cancer.

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In recent years, research has begun identifying these developmental proteins that cause these transitions. As each is discovered and studied, we hope to find ways of disabling these pathways in adults where they are no longer needed, and thus keeping cancer within the body localized to a specific area, and halting its deadly spread. These proteins are transcription factors, which tell the cell which parts of the DNA to decode into proteins. Mutation of these transcription factors can tell a cell not to die when it should, to constantly divide, or to lose its adhesion to surrounding tissue, and usually results in all three.

More on Transcription Factors

Identification of these genes and their resulting proteins gives us a way not only to combat this disease, but also perhaps a way to identify it, by determining the over-expression or under-expression of certain proteins which should not be there. As we study these transitions and transcription factors, we find more every day which influence the growth and progression of this disease, and give us new ways to combat its spread, and extend the lives of those afflicted.