Anyone who has tried to improve their exercise performance, such as running faster or jumping higher, may know that mitochondria plays a key role in providing the energy needed to meet those goals. Mitochondria are considered the powerhouse of cells because they provide cellular energy, and many people believe the more present in cells the better. However, a new study found that in the case of lung cancer cells, regulating the numbers of mitochondria in the cells could help shrink the tumor. This finding may also be beneficial to other cancers, such as mesothelioma, that can be chemo-resistant.
Although pleural mesothelioma, a cancer caused by past exposure to asbestos that attacks the tissue lining the lungs, and many other cancers rely on chemotherapy as the primary treatment method for killing the cancerous cells, many times the cancers become resistant to the treatment. Researchers are continuously looking for a novel therapy that will effectively induce apoptosis (cell death) for these chemo-resistant cancers.
Now, University of Chicago researchers believe mitochondria "may be a promising new target for cancer therapy." The new therapy, they report, "may be especially useful in cancers which become resistant to conventional chemotherapy."
University of Chicago researchers reported earlier this year that within each cell, mitochondria are constantly splitting and re-joining through fission and fusion, respectively. But before a cell can divide, the mitochondria must first increase their numbers through fission and separate into two piles, one for each of the two cells.
They found that by reversing an imbalance of the signals that regulate fusion and fission in the rapidly dividing cancer cells, cell division was significantly reduced. This in turn prevented the rapid cell proliferation that is a "hallmark of cancer growth." Stopping cancer cells from splitting and dividing is key to preventing metastasis, the spreading of the cancer to other organs.
"This could be a potential new Achilles' heel for cancer cells," said the study's lead author, Jalees Rehman, MD, an associate professor of medicine and pharmacology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Many anticancer drugs target cell division. Our work shifts the focus to a distinct but necessary step: mitochondrial division. The cell division cycle comes to a halt if the mitochondria are prevented from dividing."
The researchers were quick to point out that "this is not a cure." The authors noted that while the treatment drastically reduced tumor size, the tumors did not completely disappear.
Lung cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States and afflicted 157,300 Americans in 2010, according to federal statistics. 3,000 Americans die from mesothelioma each year.
The findings were reported in the journal FASEB.
