Newswise — Cancer cells don’t die when they’re supposed to. Animal and human bodies follow an orderly process of birthing new cells and killing old ones. But cancer cells escape programmed cell death, called apoptosis, and multiply uncontrollably. Now new research from The University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center sheds light on how the cells of one type of cancer cheat death. In a paper published in Oncotarget, Alexandre Chigaev, PhD, and his team describe the apoptosis-evading process that leukemia cells use. The team also discovered that some approved drugs can fight this process. They hope to begin leukemia clinical trials soon.
“There are mechanisms that eliminate mutated cells, normally,” says Chigaev. “But one of the ways that cancer cells survive [is] that those mechanisms break.” In studying cellular systems, Chigaev and his team discovered a process that leukemia cells use to expel a molecule that could be toxic and that starts apoptosis. Normal blood cells don’t have the cellular machinery for this process.
All cells produce a molecule called cyclic adenosine monophosphate, or cyclic AMP, through normal cellular processes. If it builds up, cyclic AMP can harm the cell, so the cell converts it to a nontoxic form. Most normal cells can maintain low levels of cyclic AMP because their conversion system can keep up. If too much cyclic AMP piles up, though, the apoptosis process starts and the cell dies.
The Chigaev team was studying another molecule called VLA-4. It is an adhesion molecule that works like glue to keep each cell in its proper place, called its niche. The team discovered that cyclic AMP reduces VLA-4’s stickiness, allowing cells to detach and wander when they shouldn’t. “That’s how we stumbled upon it,” says Chigaev. “Cyclic AMP reduces cell adhesion and maybe that’s one of the mechanisms by which [leukemic] cells leave bone marrow niches.” The team also confirmed other scientists’ findings that cyclic AMP starts apoptosis in leukemia cells.
So the team studied cyclic AMP’s effect on leukemia cells and discovered that leukemia cells could pump the molecule out. But when they loaded cyclic AMP into normal blood cells, the cyclic AMP remained inside. The team confirmed their model by testing several different drugs that block leukemia cells’ ability to pump cyclic AMP out. The drugs, all approved by the Food and Drug Administration, are used to fight malaria and fungal infections. They disable the cellular machinery that leukemia cells have to pump out cyclic AMP. When that machinery is disabled, the leukemia cells died. Because normal cells don’t have such machinery, the drugs had no effect on them.
“This particular mechanism of action has not been reported for these drugs,” says Chigaev. “And the idea that cells can have this apoptotic escape, or apoptotic evasion, through cyclic AMP pumping, that’s new. It’s never been reported previously.”
The discovery gives cancer scientists another target to shoot at in stopping cancer. Repurposing already-approved drugs greatly shortens the approval process to use them for leukemia. Since the drugs were tested on cells from actual leukemia patients, the Chigaev team hopes to continue seeing promising results. They have begun animal studies in preparation for human clinical trials.
About Alexandre Chigaev, PhDAlexandre Chigaev, PhD, is a Research Associate Professor at the Center for Molecular Discovery at The University of New Mexico. He is an Associate Member of the UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center in the Cancer Therapeutics Research Group. Dr. Chigaev holds a doctorate in Biology from Moscow State University and completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel; at Los Alamos National Laboratories; and at UNM. His research interests focus on using flow cytometry-based technologies to analyze human leukocyte function and to develop protocols that test drug sensitivity of patient samples.
Paper Reference“Cyclic AMP efflux inhibitors as potential therapeutic agents for leukemia” was published in the April 26 online edition of Oncotarget (www.impactjournals.com/oncotarget). Authors are: Dominique R. Perez, Yelena Smagley, Matthew Garcia, Mark B. Carter, Annette Evangelisti, Ksenia Matlawska-Wasowska, Stuart S. Winter, Larry A. Sklar and Alexandre Chigaev.
About the UNM Comprehensive Cancer CenterThe University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center is the Official Cancer Center of New Mexico and the only National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center in a 500-mile radius. One of the premier cancer centers nationwide, the UNM CCC has 125 board-certified oncology physicians, forming New Mexico’s largest cancer care team. It treats about 60 percent of adults and virtually all the children in New Mexico diagnosed with cancer — more than 10,000 people— from every county in the state in more than 135,000 clinic visits each year. Through its partnership with the New Mexico Cancer Care Alliance, an “exemplary national model for cancer health care delivery,” the UNM CCC offers access to more than 175 clinical trials to New Mexicans in every part of the state. Annual research funding of more than $72 million supports the UNM CCC’s 129 cancer scientists. Working with partners at Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories, Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute, and New Mexico State University, they have developed new diagnostics and drugs for leukemia, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, liver and pancreatic cancer, brain cancer, and melanoma; garnered 33 new patents and 117 patents pending; and launched 13 new biotechnology companies since 2010. Learn more at cancer.unm.edu.
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