The cancer cells have the ability to fight back the treatment that's why some therapies are not successful. But a new therapeutic treatment can deactivate the defense of these cancerous cells.
Director of the Ottawa Institute of Systems Biology and associate Professor at University of Ottawa's Faculty of Medicine, Dr. Kristin Baetz, says that the study opens a new door in discovering a new therapeutic treatment to fight back against harmful cells.
Stress granules (SGs) helps and protects the cells of the body against environmental stressors. However, they also help the cancer cells in competing against chemotherapeutic treatments. Often, SGs can resist common therapies. It is important to understand how the stress granules formed and disassembled to prevent this occurrence. The researchers have the key information about this; with the use of yeast cells.
Using yeast cells, researchers found a certain class of enzymes that activates the regulation of SGs formation. If this class of enzymes will be deactivated, the level of SGs in the body will decrease. Yeast cells generally the source of information on human cells because they imitate the cell biology of a human.
In addition, a new group of drugs was developed against this class of enzymes associated with SGs, and it was successful in lowering the level of stress granules in the body. The findings further applied to a line of breast cancer cells with yeast cells, and still, it shows that the drug once again reduced the production of SGs in the body.
The researchers have found the way on how to detect the stress granules using yeast cells, and how to reduce its presence using the new disease therapy drug. Dr. Baetz and her team hope that their research will lead them on how to completely deactivate the defense of cancerous cells.