RESEARCH
Cancer rewound Specific microRNAs can help to rein in aggressively growing cancer cells, according to a study published on 24 August (Nat. Cell Biol., doi: 10.1038/ncb3227, 2015). The researchers described a previously unknown mechanism that helps to produce certain microRNAs that inhibit the production of growth-related proteins, causing normal epithelial cells to stop growing once they come into contact. In the cancerous breast and kidney samples that the researchers examined, this mechanism was broken because the cells were deficient in their levels of these microRNAs. By replacing the missing microRNAs, the researchers were able to restore normal growth in cultured cancer cells. MicroRNAs could potentially be developed into therapies to make cancer more responsive to other treatments, says Panos Anastasiadis, a cancer biologist at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, and an author of the study. “If you have cancer at an early stage, and it's not very aggressive, there are reasonably good therapies. Where we fail is the very aggressive cancers,” Anastasiadis says. “Our idea is that people could use the microRNAs to turn the clock back a little bit.”
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