NBC News
Overweight and obesity have long been related to a greater risk of developing breast cancer that can be deadly. New research suggests a reason: certain tumors can feed on neighboring fatty cells.
The findings could help scientists find ways to treat triple negative breast cancer, which is very aggressive and has lower survival rates. In addition, the results could be applied to any type of tumor that uses fat as a source of energy, according to the report published on Wednesday in Nature Communications.
The triple negative represents about 15% of all breast cancers. It tends to be more common in black women and children under 40, and it is more likely to reappear than other types of cancer.
Mamular tumor cells seem to access the content of fatty cells by introducing a structure similar to a straw in fat cells and then evicting the lipids stored in them.
If researchers manage to find a way to prevent tumors from being introduced into neighboring fat cells without damaging patients, they could have a way to cure these cancers, often mortal, according to the main author of the study, Jeremy Williams, postdoctoral researcher at the University of California in San Francisco.
“Aggressive cancer cells can appropriate different nutrient sources to help their growth, even stimulating the fat cells of the breast to release their lipids,” said Williams, “in the future, the new treatments could deprive food cells of food to tumor cells preventing access to lipids of neighboring cells.”
Lipids are fatty compounds, such as cholesterol, which are mainly used to store energy in the body.
Williams and his colleagues conducted multiple experiments, some with fabric of patients with breast cancer and others with a murmured model with breast cancer.
In the experiments in which human tissue was used exclusively, researchers examined fatty cells at different distances from tumor cells. They discovered that the closer the fat cells of the tumor cells were, the more exhausted they were lipid.
When the researchers blocked the capacity of tumor cells to build straw -like structures, officially known as communicating unions, tumors stopped growing.
They found a similar result in a mouse model, in which tumor cells of breast cancer patients were genetically modified so that they would lose part of their ability to create communicating joints. When the tissue was implemented in the rodents, they were protected.
“The elimination of a single gene prevented the formation and progression of the tumor,” said Williams.
(The reappearance of breast cancer is especially dangerous. A new study seeks to prevent that scenario)
Williams and his colleagues began investigating the mechanisms that explained an previous finding of the laboratory in which he worked.
“These tumors burned fatty acids as a source of energy,” he explained, “it seemed urgent to answer the question where fatty acids came from.”
It turns out that several medications that inhibit the formation of communicating unions are being studied in clinical trials in the initial phase for other purposes, according to Williams.
How “cancer grows and feeds”
Julia McGuinness, a specialist in breast cancer and professor of Medicine at the Faculty of Physicians and Vaglos Surgeons at Columbia University, indicated that it is the first test of a mechanism that shows the association between fat and cancer.
Also “suggests a way to treat aggressive cancers for which we don’t have good therapies,” McGuinness said. “We already know that obese women suffering from this type of cancer have worse results,” he added.
New research could also suggest that changes in lifestyle that would help women achieve healthy weight could also protect them against this type of cancers, McGuinness said. “Lossing could be beneficial,” he said and added that it has been shown that obesity is a risk factor for all types of breast cancer.
The authors of the study found ways to analyze the mechanism that links fat with the growth of breast cancer in ways that could not be tested in humans, said Justin Balko, Professor Ingram of research on cancer at the Medical Center of the University of Vanderbilt.
“They discovered a new way in which cancer grows and feeds,” said Balko, “if some of the same effects are observed in humans, it could be a reason to change the way we treat patients.”
But there are some caveats, Balko added: “For example, we do not know if this is an important mechanism by which breast cancer grows in human beings,” he said, “but makes a lot of sense.”
