Scientists Discover Key Protein that Defies Cancer Death

Amy Taylor May 21, 2013

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Normally, cells that have incurred DNA damage go through a forced or programmed cell death, technically called apoptosis.  But in the case of cancer, this process is bypassed. As a result, cancer cells continue to thrive even after chemotherapy drugs have completely destroyed their DNA. But a groundbreaking research suggests this kind of resistance can be reversed.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found a way to prevent cancer cells from resisting programmed cell death. They arrived to the groundbreaking discovery after identifying a key protein involved in an alternative death pathway known as programmed necrosis. According to the researchers, drugs that mimic the effects of this protein push cancer cells that ignored the apoptosis to undergo necrosis instead.

The protein, called ALKBH7, has been discovered 12 years ago as part of a DNA-repair mechanism. Leona Samson, one of the study authors, and a member of MIT’s Centre for Environmental Health Sciences and Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, has been studying ALKBH7 for several years now. Previously, she and her colleagues found that this protein plays a key role in controlling the programmed necrosis pathway.

In the current study, researchers found that ALKBH7 produces an unexpected effect to cells. When they reduced the ALKBH7 levels in human cells, the cells became more resistant to DNA damage as compared to the cells with normal levels of the said protein. Their findings, which were published in the journal Genes & Development, suggest that ALKBH7 may actually promote cell death.

Potential treatment targets for cancer

20,000 people die of cancer around the world each day, according to a paper published in the American Cancer Society. That accounts to over 7 million deaths in just one year. Despite the development of many treatments for cancer, this life-threatening disease continues to plague thousands and millions of lives. The new study provides revolutionary approach to enhancing the effects of traditional treatments for cancer, including chemotherapy drugs. The current research suggests that when cell DNA is severely harmed, the programmed necrosis pathway comes in to prevent the damaged cells from becoming cancerous. Developing a drug that induces necrosis can increase the rate of success of recovery from cancer.

Currently, the researchers are studying the molecular details of programmed necrosis in the hope of finding ways to activate it in cancer cells.

Source of this article:

Human ALKBH7 is required for alkylation and oxidation-induced programmed necrosis