The thought was triggered by a Tom Robbins novel – he explains there about “teaching the cancer good manners rather than killing it” as an alternative to the usual aggressive cytotoxic approach.
A fundamental pathological phenomenon in cancer (or even in a benign tumor) is the growth as nodule (=tumor) instead as growing in the regular histological structure.
The idea is to target the “nodular growth” of the tumor cells. Not just cell proliferation and not just vascularisation (the growth of blood vessels) – these are physiological, occur in normal tissues, and therefore if they are targeted a lot of adverse effects are induced. If there is some characteristic (may be even specific) gene expression for the nodular growth of a tumor, targeting this should not affect the physiological growth in other tissues.
So, what do we know about the difference between ”normal“ growth and the nodular growth as tumor?
In my mind, cell adhesion molecules and junctional proteins are important for this phenotype. They could be molecular targets for therapeutics.
Nodular growth of a tumor is hardly the problem in cancer compared to infiltrating cells. Nodules can be resected most of the time, but what causes recurrence and metastasis are usually the infiltrating cells. As they migrate inside the healthy tissue and as they are not traceable they are not resected and are the major source of metastasis and recurrence.
It's only my opinion, but you got to be carefull when trying to disrupt the adhesion of the tumor bulk because you could increase the number of infiltrating cells.
Regards
As we all know cancer will emerge when the cells go malignant. In the malignancy I think the pattern of gene experssion is totally different and still not entirely known for researcher. Although at first it seems logical that for example the experssion of surface molecules in cancer cells will change. But for targeting the best changed molecules into delivering the drug or reducing the side effects of routine therapeutic regime on normal cells difficult and confusing way is ahead. Personally I think it is better to focus on some natural compounds which are not toxic in normal cells but can attack the malignant counterparts using simple mechanisms like oxidation/reduction status of cells.
Dear Harald
The heterogeneity of the tumour cells has a potential problem at the tumour therapy. The cells differ from each other in many features.The more differences among the tumour cells then a well-directed therapy will be much more difficult.
best wishes
Eva
I've just retrieved this citation: 'A microRNA regulon that mediates endothelial recruitment and metastasis by Cancer Cells' , Nature 2011, Dec 14. 481 (7380), 190-4. Searching for this one in databases, and looking for related an citing articles perhaps may be of help. Salut +
In Lung, 'ground glass nodules' tend to be assessed as bening, however, what was formerly a distinct entity, and now enters the Adenocarcinoma group: Bronchioloalveolar carcinoma, often produces potentially consfusing 'ground glass images' on plain Chest radiography
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