DAEJEON, South Korea (PNN) - February 11, 2025 - What if the best course of action in the fight against cancer isn’t to fight at all?
Rather than killing these mutated cells, a new study from Korea presents a treatment wherein they can be changed back to healthy cells at a key moment.
The authors liken the method to the moment just before water reaches 212°F, when it’s neither truly liquid nor truly gas. There is such a moment when a cell is both cancerous and normal, when it’s possible to turn it back down the path of health with a gentle nudge.
The experiment was performed on a lab-grown tumor in a petri dish and so has a long way to go before it is visible in any hospital.
“This study has revealed in detail, at the genetic network level, what changes occur within cells behind the process of cancer development, which has been considered a mystery until now,” Kwang-Hyun Cho, a professor of biology at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and co-author of the new research, said in a statement.
“This is the first study to reveal that an important clue that can revert the fate of [tumor development] is hidden at this very moment of change,” he added.
The authors write in their paper that recent advances in gene regulatory network modeling have offered insights into controlling cell fates, especially interesting for the “critical transitions” referred to earlier; but modeling the tipping point from cell to tumor remains challenging due to genetic alterations that dynamically reshape networks throughout the tumorigenic process.
Nevertheless, Professor Cho and his partners identified an enzyme hindering the breakdown of certain cancer-related proteins, allowing them to fuel tumor growth. By blocking the enzyme, the lab-grown tumors stopped growing and reverted to a healthy state of normal functioning.
What other functions does the enzyme have in tumors; what about in healthy cells? Could it be blocked with a pharmaceutical application? These questions will certainly be much on the minds of the study team as they expand on this potentially revolutionary idea of treating cancer.
