"The birth of cancer cells caught on tape"

[Guest Ian Wong]

I was just reading the Medical Post (by the way, this is a really cool publication, and you all should check it out at least once), and came upon the following article.

 

Essentially, these researchers videotaped cancer cells proliferating using time-lapse photography, and discovered, at least in whichever cell lines they were using, that those cancer cells did not divide by mitosis, but rather something else known as neosis (where multiple daughter cells can bud off a gigantic precursor cell). Obviously, figuring out more details of this replication pathway could lead to more sites of attack for new anti-neoplastic chemotherapy agents.

 

Similar to the discovery in Saskatoon last year that women can ovulate multiple times per month (counter to the conventional truism that you get one ovulation per cycle), it really makes you wonder just how much we really know about the human condition (perhaps I'm overstating things and this is a non-representative freakish cell line, but it really flips me out to think of how much money we pour into cancer research, and yet we still don't understand fundamentally how these cells divide???).

 

The abstract can be found here:

 

Cancer Biol Ther. 2004 Feb;3(2). [Epub ahead of print]

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=14726689&dopt=Abstract

 

Here's the link to the Medical Post article:

 

www.medicalpost.com/mpcontent/article.jsp?content=20040224_115748_4732

 

The birth of cancer cells caught on tape for first time

 

Discovery of new form of cell division could revolutionize cancer treatment

 

By Donalee Moulton

 

HALIFAX – A team of researchers at Dalhousie University has caught on tape—for the first time—the birth of cancer cells.

 

In the process of capturing the birth, the researchers have discovered a new form of cell division that could revolutionize cancer treatment and potentially prevent the disease, according to their study published in the February issue of Cancer Biology & Therapy.

 

"We looked at cells every day for 40 days, (and) the work paid off. We saw something that hadn't been seen before," said Dr. Rengaswami Rajaraman, who holds an honorary professorship in the department of medicine after 25 years of teaching cancer biology at Dalhousie medical school.

 

Dr. Rajaraman and his colleague, Dr. Duane Guernsey, director of the division of molecular pathology and molecular genetics at Dalhousie, used a computerized video time-lapse microscope to capture the live birth of the deadly cells—and discovered a form of cell division unique to cancer.

 

The implications, said Dr. Rajaraman, are extremely significant. "The assumption has been that cancer arises when a normal cell sustains DNA damage then goes on to divide through the process of mitosis, thus passing the faulty genetic information along to future generations of cells."

 

The Nova Scotia research team, however, has uncovered a type of cell division, called neosis, that enables initial formation of cancer cells, continued growth of tumours, and spread of cancer cells throughout the body.

 

In mitosis, a cell divides evenly into two daughter cells. The daughter cells then divide into two identical cells and so on. Neosis is completely different. It does not happen in normal cells at all, but occurs instead in unusually large cells containing many nuclei.

 

Called multi-nucleate/polyploid giant cells (MN/PGs), these cells have been observed in cell cultures exposed to carcinogens for experimental purposes and also in human tumour tissues. Researchers have considered MN/PGs to be insignificant in terms of cancer, because they cannot divide by mitosis and therefore, eventually die.

 

What hadn't been known until now is that before they die, the giant cells produce several tiny daughter cells in a process similar to yeast. These tiny cells, dubbed "Raju" cells, literally jump out of the giant mother cell and begin to divide by mitosis. At this point, the Raju cells become cancer cells, continuing to divide and form malignant tumours.

 

Neosis is repeated several times during tumor growth, thus producing newer batches of tumor-initiating Raju cells.

 

"Therapies aimed at neosis would halt cancer growth without affecting mitotic division of normal cells," Dr. Rajaraman said. "We envision that anti-neotic agents could be used not only to treat cancers but to prevent them from occurring in the first place."

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