A new study shows that cancer cells with extra chromosomes rely on those additional chromosomes for tumor growth, and removing them halts tumor formation. The research opens a potential new avenue for cancer treatment by selectively targeting these extra chromosomes.
A recent study from Yale indicates that additional chromosomes in cancer cells are essential for the growth of tumors. Removing these extra chromosomes inhibits tumor formation. The findings, said the researchers, indicate that selectively targeting extra chromosomes may offer a new route for treating cancer.
The study was recently published in the journal Science.
Human cells typically have 23 pairs of chromosomes; extra chromosomes are an anomaly known as aneuploidy.
“If you look at normal skin or normal lung tissue, for example, 99.9% of the cells will have the right number of chromosomes,” said Jason Sheltzer, assistant professor of surgery at Yale School of Medicine and senior author of the study. “But we’ve known for over 100 years that nearly all cancers are aneuploid.”
However, it was unclear what role extra chromosomes played in cancer — for instance, whether they cause cancer or are caused by it.
“For a long time, we could observe aneuploidy but not manipulate it. We just didn’t have the right tools,” said Sheltzer, who is also a researcher at Yale Cancer Center. “But in this study, we used the gene-engineering technique CRISPR to develop a new approach to eliminate entire chromosomes from cancer cells, which is an important technical advance. Being able to manipulate aneuploid chromosomes in this way will lead to a greater understanding of how they function.”
The study was co-led by former lab members Vishruth Girish, now an M.D.-Ph.D. student at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and Asad Lakhani, now a postdoctoral researcher at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Using their newly developed approach — which they dubbed Restoring Disomy in Aneuploid cells using CRISPR Targeting, or ReDACT — the researchers targeted aneuploidy in melanoma, gastric cancer, and ovarian cell lines. Specifically, they removed an aberrant third copy of the long portion — also known as the “q arm” — of chromosome 1, which is found in several types of cancer, is linked to disease progression, and occurs early in cancer development.
“When we eliminated aneuploidy from the genomes of these cancer cells, it compromised the malignant potential of those cells and they lost their ability to form tumors,” said Sheltzer.
I – Word Understanding
Chromosomes – a threadlike structures made of protein and a single molecule of DNA that serve to carry the genomic information from cell to cell.
Aneuploidy – the condition of having an abnormal number of chromosomes in a haploid set.
Melanoma – the most serious type of skin cancer.
Aberrant – departing from an accepted standard.
Genome – is the complete set of genetic information in an organism.
970 HOMEHEALTH NEWS Yale Researchers Discover Potential New Way To Treat Cancer
