Health & Medicine - Posted by Bill Hathaway-Yale on Friday, January 15, 2010 17:16 - 4 Comments 
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(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...Trigger: Stress kick starts tumor growth
While new research shows it is easier than previously thought for cancer to take root in the body, it also identifies new targets to prevent and treat one of the deadliest diseases in the developed world. “Better understanding of the underlying mechanism causing cancer always offers new tools to battle the disease,” Tian Xu notes.
YALE—New research shows stress sends signals that cause cells to develop into tumors. The findings reveal a novel way cancer takes hold in the body—and suggests new ways to attack the deadly disease.
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The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
Yale University researchers report their findings online in the journal Nature.
Until now, most researchers believed that more than one cancer-causing mutation needed to take place in a single cell in order for tumors to grow. The Yale team, led by Tian Xu, professor and vice chairman of genetics and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator (HHMI), illustrated that cancer-causing mutations can cooperate to promote tumor development even when they are located in different cells within a tissue.
“The bad news is that it is much easier for a tissue to accumulate mutations in different cells than in the same cell,” saysXu, who also is a researcher with the Yale Cancer Center and the Fudan-Yale Center for Biomedical Research at Fudan University in China.
The Yale team worked with fruit flies to study the activity of two genes known to be involved in development of human cancers: a gene called RAS that has been implicated in 30 percent of cancers, and a tumor-suppressing gene called scribble, which contributes to tumor development when mutated.
Neither a mutated RAS nor the defective scribble alone can cause cancer. Researchers in the Xu lab previously showed that a combination of the two within the same cell could trigger malignant tumors.
However, the Yale team found that these mutations did not have to co-exist in the same cell to cause tumors. A cell with only mutant RAS can develop into a malignant tumor if helped by a nearby cell with defective scribble.
They also found stress conditions such as a wound could trigger cancer formation. For instance, RAS cells developed into tumors when a wound was induced in the tissue. The culprit underlying both phenomena turned out to be a signaling process called JNK, which is activated by environmental stress conditions.
“A lot of different conditions can trigger stress signaling: physical stress, emotional stress, infections, inflammation—all these things. Another bad news for cancer,” Xu says.
While the paper shows it is easier than previously thought for cancer to take root in the body, it also identifies new targets to prevent and treat one of the deadliest diseases in the developed world. The Yale team found that the JNK stress signaling travels from one cell to the next, but that the propagation can be blocked.
“Better understanding of the underlying mechanism causing cancer always offers new tools to battle the disease,” Xu notes.
The research was funded by the National Cancer Institute and HHMI.
Yale University news: http://opa.yale.edu/
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celia kozlowski
Before we go concluding that this proves we can reduce cancer in humans by reducing stress, it’s important to “stress” that this was research done in fruitflies. They mention humans have two of the three enzymes involved, but what about JNK, and does the stress of causing a wound in a fruitfly translate biochemically to the processes in humans? Do we have additional systems in our bodies that counteract these forces? What does epidemiology show — is there a higher rate of cancer in people under stress? Do people who sustain flesh wounds have higher rates of wnt/scribble-related tumors? This research does not link directly to cancer in humans.
I’m all for reducing stress, but I wouldn’t say this research, at this point, adds much to the the pile of reasons we should combat stress in our lives. In fact, it could stress people unnecessarily if it turns out that stress is not an important direct factor in causing human cancer! (Thinking about indirect links between stress and cancer, I have seen that people under stress often smoke more and/or put on weight. These behaviors do have proven links to elevated human cancer risk.)
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This is good to know about. Stress is so pervasive in our lives that is easy to become complacent about it. This research indicates that there really is a powerful relationship between stress and disease.
The research might seem discouraging but it is actually beneficial. The stress is not “all in our heads.” When we realize that stress does impact our health then we can be more motivated to take corrective action and reduce our stress levels.
Fortunately there are many simple effective ways to relieve stress. Slow deep breathing, laughter, herbs, meditation, massage, exercise, healthy diet, positive visualization, getting organized, and learning better communication and time management skills are just a few of the powerful ways we can learn to reduce stress and feel better.