The Change Mariner: Greek Scientists Weaken Cancer Cells

March 01, 2004

Greek Scientists Weaken Cancer Cells

Greek scientists said they have found a way to lower cancer cell resistance to medical treatment in what could be a major step in treating a disease that kills more than six million people every year.
The procedure, which only recently started testing on animals, could make chemotherapy more effective at significantly reduced dosages and eliminate many of its side effects.

The key lies in 'switching off' Apolipoprotein J, also known as clusterin or Apo J for short, a protein used by healthy and diseased cells alike as a shield against attacks, Stathis Gonos, leader of the research team, told Reuters on Monday.

"Our research was looking at genetic and environmental factors related to aging, and that is how we found the function of Apo J in healthy cells is to act as a shield, or 'survival factor', against toxic factors in the environment," Gonos said.

"Our next step was to investigate whether Apo J has a similar function in cancer cells, and indeed saw that it retains the same function of defending cells, shielding them from e.g. chemotherapy prescribed by a doctor to treat cancer," he added.

Cells react to what they perceive as an assault with all the weapons they have, producing vast quantities of Apo J as a shield against the attack, be that an infection or an anti-cancer drug.

"We used a new technology called RNA Interference to silence the expression of Apo J and saw that in the case of cancer cells they became a lot more fragile and this made it a lot easier to kill them with normal chemo," Gonos said.

Gene Silencing by RNA Interference: Technology and Application
CRC Press

Amazon Price: $139.95

Rna Interference, Editing, and Modification: Methods and Protocols (Methods in Molecular Biology (Clifton, N.J.);, V. 265.)
Humana Press

Amazon Price: $125.00

RNA Interference

Amazon Price: $56.95

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