The role of mitochondria plays in the development of cancer

As cellular power plants, mitochondria are vital for every organism, because their role is to produce energy and also to control survival. However, their role in cancer is still not completely known. This is particularly important, because in general, the proliferation of tumor cells is faster than that of normal tissues. Scientists have speculated that the mechanism of protecting mitochondrial function is the cause of supporting the tumor proliferation.

Now, scientists at Wistar Institute have found a special protein network structure in the mitochondria of tumor cells. There are also many mitochondria recombinant proteins in the market. This structure is essential for the maintenance of clear function of mitochondria. It not only can make tumor cell proliferate, but also can make tumor cells gain the ability of moving and invading distant organs. After having a clear relationship of them, Wistar Institute scientists were able to greatly reduce the ability of cancer cells to grow and spread by closing single subunit in mesh structure, which is a novel and attractive targeted therapy method. The findings are published in the journal PLoS Biology. "This is an example of how the tumor can quickly adapt to handle a higher self-biosynthesis need," President and CEO of Wistar Institute Cancer Center Dr. Dario C. Altieri said. "Mitochondria play an important role in the process of requiring energy of tumor growth and metastasis. Therefore, to determine the mechanism of how tumors maintaining the mitochondrial function and using it to support the abnormal cell proliferation and metastatic spread may become the latest targeting treatment method for many types of cancer."

The evidence provided by previous study shows that being able to control the folding and stability of protein or maintaining protein balance is very important to reduce cell stress. It is also known as tumor's hijacking mechanism of protein balance advantage, but how it happens in the mitochondria is still largely unknown. With the help of recombinant human proteins, this protein network structure described by scientists at Wistar Institute answered to this riddles and confirmed its important role in tumor pathogenesis. In particular, a component in this network structure - ClpP - is found widely overexpressed in many human primary and metastatic cancers and is associated with shorter survival of patients. Alone in this study, scientists have determined the overexpression of this subunit in breast cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer, lung cancer, melanoma and lymphoma.

"Many studies show great interest on targeting pathways involving in mitochondrial function, we have identified such a way which can provide multi targeted cancer "drug" therapeutic targets," first author of the study, postdoctoral researcher Jae Ho Seo at Altieri Lab of Wistar Institute said. "Other research studies have shown that, in preclinical models, targeting at mitochondrial protein is feasible, so destroying the network structure determined in this study may be able to shut down the key processes which lead to tumor progression." Flarebio also provides you with superior recombinant proteins like recombinant Vcam1.