Head and Neck Cancer Cells are Brilliant in Taking Over Healthy Cells

Head and neck cancer cells communicate with the nearby healthy cells and extend their growth in multiple locations. Developing newer therapeutics that interrupt communications between malignant and healthy cells could improve outcomes in patients with head and neck cancer.

We all are familiar with movies where criminals undermine the authority of a system to take in charge and do their illicit activities. Researchers say that some cancer cells could be doing the same in our bodies to promote their growth and intrusion by themselves.

A group of scientists from the University of Michigan School of Dentistry pointed out a mechanism by which head and neck cancer cells destabilize and scrape the neighbouring healthy cells, to establish a silent survival space beneath them. It is important to note that up to half of the patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma will experience tumor recurrence or new tumors that often spread and are difficult to treat. The findings of this research are published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine .

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Head and neck cancers usually occur in the squamous cells lining the moist, mucosal surfaces inside the head and neck.

‘Head and neck cancer cells that suppress the expression of DMBT1 gene and undergo metastasis’

"Our research demonstrated that cancer cells also communicate with healthy cells of their own cell type to facilitate spread," said principal investigator Nisha D' Silva, the Donald A. Kerr Endowed Collegiate Professor of Oral Pathology.

DMBT1 could be the game-changer in cancer development

Previous evidence indicated that there is an underlying gene-silencing mechanism in oral cancer development where a specific gene, DMBT1 is regulated and prevented from producing proteins.

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Thus, this research observed whether this gene plays any role in the dissemination of head and neck cancer cells. The outcomes of the study proved that head and neck cancer cells manufacture two proteins that can suppress DMBT1 in the adjacent healthy cells.

While the researchers looked at this mechanism in mice, chick embryos and cultures of human cancer cells, most of the control tumors in the chick embryos that had lower DMBT1 gene expressions underwent a process called metastasis, in which cancer cells outspread from the primary site to the nearby tissue sites.

By this, it can be understood that the cancer cells which curb the expression of DMBT1 might impair the stability of nearby healthy cells, invade in small amounts, burrow under them, thereby making themselves widespread.

Nisha D' Silva concluded, "The importance of this paper is that loss of DMBT1 in cancer cells and adjacent normal tissue benefits cancer cells, allowing them to travel in tiny groups away from the main tumor."

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New combination therapy was effective in patients with head and neck cancer, said researchers.

This study could pave the way for the development of new therapeutics that suppress the production of ‘proteins’ in cancer cells that regulate DMBT1, thereby inducing the expression of DMBT1 and interrupting the communications between malignant and healthy cells.

Source-Medindia