Stress, cancer and immunity
How a Stress Gene Helps Cancer
Kirill Stasevich, Compulenta
Scientists often talk about the connection between cancer and stress: they say that stress stimulates oncological diseases, doing this with the help of the immune system. However, until now, most of the research on this topic has not provided any molecular genetic explanations of the relationship, sometimes limited to pure statistics (although very revealing). Therefore, the work published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation by a group of authors from Ohio State University (Wolford et al., Transcription factor ATF3 links host adaptive response to breast cancer metastasis) attracts special attention. In it, researchers describe a gene that links stress and cancer.
This gene, called ATF3, has long been known to scientists as one of the main genes of cellular suicide: if a cell experiences severe stress, ATF3 is activated in it, which leads to its death. However, researchers have noticed that the same gene wakes up with enviable constancy in the immune cells of breast cancer patients. Moreover, the level of its activity coincided with the deterioration of the clinical prognosis: the more active ATF3 was, the less chance there was of survival.
On the diagram from the article in J Clin Invest. the connections of ATF3 with various signaling factors are shown
tumor microenvironments leading to disturbances in the biological activity of the macrophage – VM.And, curiously, in this case, it only mattered how this protein is synthesized in immune cells.
Its activity in cancer cells did not affect the course of the disease.
Animal experiments have shown that if this gene is turned off in immune cells, then the cancer behaves less aggressively and forms fewer metastases. Cancer in animals was caused by injection of malignant cells, so that the type of cancer they had was the same, and even the primary tumors were about the same. Differences were noted only in the number of metastases and the rate of their spread.
Immunity, as you know, in addition to bacteria and viruses, must catch and destroy cancer cells. But if the body is under stress, there is a risk that the ATF3 gene is activated in immune cells, which will destroy immune cells and thereby weaken the immune defense. Therefore, stress aggravates diseases – not only oncological, but also infectious. And although experiments were carried out with only one type of cancer, it is possible that the same gene provides easy and rapid metastasis to other types of tumors.
Usually in such cases, scientists rejoice that they have managed to find another target that can be hit with anti-cancer drugs. However, in this case, researchers will have to find out in detail exactly how ATF3 works in stressed immune cells and whether it is possible to regulate its activity without fear of any large-scale and unpleasant side effects.
Prepared by the materials of the Ohio State University –
The Stress and Cancer Link: ‘Master-Switch’ Stress Gene Enables Cancer’s SpreadPortal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru