Scientists Successfully Turn Breast Cancer Cells Into Fat to Stop Them From Spreading
Science Alert ^ | 8.10.2019 | Jacinta Bowler
Posted on 8/10/2019, 11:47:04 AM
Researchers have been able to coax human breast cancer cells to turn into fat cells in a new proof-of-concept study in mice.
To achieve this feat, the team exploited a weird pathway that metastasising cancer cells have; their results are just a first step, but it's a truly promising approach.
When you cut your finger, or when a foetus grows organs, the epithelium cells begin to look less like themselves, and more 'fluid' – changing into a type of stem cell called a mesenchyme and then reforming into whatever cells the body needs.
This process is called epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and it's been known for a while that cancer can use both this one and the opposite pathway called MET (mesenchymal‐to‐epithelial transition), to spread throughout the body and metastasise.
The researchers took mice implanted with an aggressive form of human breast cancer, and treated them with both a diabetic drug called rosiglitazone and a cancer treatment called trametinib.
Thanks to these drugs, when cancer cells used one of the above-mentioned transition pathways, instead of spreading they changed from cancer into fat cells – a process called adipogenesis.
"The models used in this study have allowed the evaluation of disseminating cancer cell adipogenesis in the immediate tumour surroundings," the team wrote in their paper, published in January 2019.
"The results indicate that in a patient-relevant setting combined therapy with rosiglitazone and trametinib specifically targets cancer cells with increased plasticity and induces their adipogenesis."
Although not every cancer cell changed into a fat cell, the ones that underwent adipogenesis didn't change back.
"The breast cancer cells that underwent an EMT not only differentiated into fat cells, but also completely stopped proliferating," said senior author Gerhard Christofori, a biochemist at the University of Basel, in Switzerland.
"As far as we can tell from long-term culture experiments, the cancer cells-turned-fat cells remain fat cells and do not revert back to breast cancer cells."
So how does this work? Well, as a drug trametinib both increases the transition process of cells - such as cancer cells turning into stem cells - and then increases the conversion of those stem cells into fat cells.
Rosiglitazone was less important, but in combination with trametinib, it also helped the stem cells convert into fat cells.
"Adipogenic differentiation therapy with a combination of rosiglitazone and [trametinib] efficiently inhibits cancer cell invasion, dissemination, and metastasis formation in various preclinical mouse models of breast cancer," the team wrote.
The image above shows this process, with the cancer cells tagged with a green fluorescent protein and normal red fat cell on the left. The cancer-turned-fat cells display as brown (on the right) because the red of the fat cells combines with the green of the protein cancer cell tag.
What's exciting is that these two drugs are already FDA-approved, so it should be easier to get this type of treatment into clinical trials for actual people.
That's exciting even despite the fact that we know many mouse-tested treatments don't actually make it to, or fail, the clinical trial stage. The fact this worked on human cancer cells gives a little extra hope.
In the meantime, the team is investigating whether this therapy would work combined with chemotherapy, and whether it would apply to other types of cancers.
"In future, this innovative therapeutic approach could be used in combination with conventional chemotherapy to suppress both primary tumour growth and the formation of deadly metastases," Christofori explained to the Press Association.
"The clinical evaluation of the treatment's repressive effect on experimental breast cancer metastasis and, thus, of its potential in treating stage IV breast cancer will require adjuvant combinations with chemotherapy in advanced preclinical models," the team wrote.
"Since we have used FDA-approved drugs to study the preclinical effect of the treatment, a clinical translation may be possible."
The research has been published in Cancer Cell.
It appears the Trump administration is drafting an executive order that has the potential to radically change how the content posted on social networks are governed, stripping crucial protections from tech companies and inserting much more government oversight. This is being done under the guise of a popular political talking point claiming that social media networks are censoring conservatives.
The drafted order, of which CNN obtained a summary, is called Protecting Americans from Online Censorship, though in its current state it appears to more powerfully instill the fear of god in social networks with millions of active users than grant these users more freedom of speech.
To be clear, there is no evidence that social media networks are actively engaged in deliberate censorship of any particular political point of view. They (sometimes) enforce their own respective terms of service agreements that oftentimes prohibit content that includes hate speech or calls to violence. For some, that’s a political ideology.
The order tasks the FCC with determining whether social media companies are protected by a provision of Section 230 when they take down content without informing the user or censor content in a way that is characterized as “anticompetitive, unfair, or deceptive.”
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act effectively states that websites and services aren’t liable for content that users or third parties post on their platforms. The drafted executive order wants to dismantle some of the protections that fall under this internet regulation and would apply to companies with a monthly user base that meets or exceeds one-eighth of the U.S. population. That would include the likes of Facebook, Google, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and Snapchat.
The order also reportedly notes that the Federal Trade Commission will open a public complaint docket and work alongside the FCC to investigate and document the moderation practices of tech companies and whether or not they are neutral. This is related to the claim in the executive order summary that the White House received over 15,000 complaints that social networks are censoring users who post content related to American politics.
It’s important to note that the draft of this executive order is subject to change, but its overall suggestion implies that the administration is hoping that the handpicked powers that be at the FCC and FTC would rework enforcement of Section 230 in a way that helps conservatives—or at least helps them make the case that they’re being censored. The irony is that the FCC and FTC don’t even do a great job of enforcing the things that already fall under their jurisdiction. But, if everything went according to the apparent plan, theoretically, corruption could prevail in Trump’s interest. And the chilling effect could be that major social networks severely restrict what users could post or simply find its unrealistic to continue operating.
“I think if you eliminate Section 230 you will see some pretty remarkable changes,” Jeff Kosseff, a cybersecurity professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, told Gizmodo earlier this year. “You can even see that in what happened after FOSTA was passed. I think it was two days after it passed in the Senate, but before it was even signed into law, Craigslist eliminated its personals ads. You might say, ‘Well, that’s not necessarily a huge social problem.’ But imagine if they got rid of all of Section 230, who else would eliminate the ability for people to freely post online?”
With Republicans clearly floating trial balloons for making social media “censorship” a campaign issue over the next year, this could all turn out to be for show and would certainly face legal challenges. But what’s clear is that we should expect more and more of this type of attempt to undermine or destroy Section 230. Someone’s bound to hit on an argument that gets through the legal process and when that happens we could be looking at a very different internet.