Doug Rosenthal Identifies A Protein Synthesis That Regenerates Cells In Colon Cancer

Structural biologist and researcher, Doug Rosenthal, along with his team from Cleveland, Ohio, have recognized protein synthesis, or biosynthetic capacity, as a key property to regeneration of the cancer cells of colon cancer.

The work of Rosenthal, gives a new therapeutic approach. The scientific community and pharmaceutical companies will explore more in depth this approach.

As explained by Rosenthal, there are differentiated cells in colon cancer which are similar to the functional cells of the intestinal wall. Also, there are pluripotent cells, tumor stem cells. The last ones, maintain tumor growth and cause metastases.

Rosenthal’s team, has shown that the ability to synthesize proteins is where that the essence of pluripotentiality resides. This is a property that could be used as a therapeutic target.

"Current colon cancer therapies fail to kill all pluripotent cells. That’s why they are not so effective. When cancer stem cells are killed through experimental strategies some differentiated cells can return to the original pluripotent state. These can regenerate the tumor. This phenomenon is called cellular plasticity ", has detailed Rosenthal.

In this work, the Rosenthal’s along with his researchers, affiliated with Center for Health Journalism, have observed that protein synthesis in tumors occurs in some specific regions. These coincide with the tumor stem cells niches.

In fact, according to Rosenthal, a gradient protein production is observed in tumors. Cells irreversibly lose the ability to return to the state of cancer stem cells, once this activity is terminated.

"The biosynthetic capacity that permits the contribution of tumor stem cells to tumor growth," Doug Rosenthal claims.

They have used colon cancer models in mice, in which they have observed that by blocking the ability to produce proteins or eliminating tumor cells with this property, they were able to stop tumor growth in an irreversible way.

The work, published on Publons, has been carried out using organoids, mini-tumors derived from patients and cultivable in the laboratory, which allow studying the heterogeneity and cellular organization of tumors.

Doug Rosenthal and his team have also required the genetic modification of tumor, cells using the CRISPR-Cas9 technique, which has made it possible to specifically eliminate cells with biosynthetic capacity to evaluate their contribution to tumor growth.