Scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine have discovered a gene that, when working correctly, kills cancer cells. But when malfunctioning, it allows potentially lethal tumors to grow unchecked.
These findings will be published in the June 8 issue of Molecular Cell, after nearly three years of research.
The gene, called P53, protects cells from damage and is the body?s tumor-suppressant gene. It helps prevent cells from becoming cancerous, said Dr. Josh Mendell of Johns Hopkins, lead researcher and assistant professor in the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine.
Though the team initially studied colon cancer, Mendell said, its findings can be applied to other cancers.
His team first chemically damaged the DNA of two sets of colon cancer cells, one missing p53 and the other containing healthy p53. They then scanned for any of 500 known human RNA segments active only in cells containing p53. RNA are fragments of genetic code that produce proteins or accomplish other tasks.
One microRNA, called miR-34a, is turned on by p53, and usually kills cancer cells containing the snippet, according to the study.
When researchers turned their attention on pancreatic cancer cells with damaged or missing p53, they found that those cells also lacked the microRNA.
“With no p53 gene or miR-34a to stem tumor development, there?s no brake in pancreatic cells, and uncontrolled growth leads to cancer,” Anirban Maitra, professor of pathology, oncology and genetic medicine, said.
Mendell and his team are looking for missing miR-34a in other cancers. If the phenomenon is widespread, their work could lead to treatments attempting to restore the missing microRNA to cancer cells.
Currently, it is too premature to say whether the experiments will translate into therapy, Mendell said.
The “first step is [to continue] understanding how this works.”
Researcher Elizabeth Skalski contributed to this article.
