Newswise — The once-mighty "mitochondriacs" of cancer research have rejoined the search for new treatments, according to a new book co-edited by a Dental School researcher at the University of Maryland, Baltimore.
From the 1920s to 1980s, many scientists focused on metabolic links between cancer cells and dysfunction of the tiny, sausage-shaped structures in human cells called mitochondria, says Leslie Costello, PhD.
Then, during the past couple of decades, the limelight on cancer research shifted to a dominance of sophisticated molecular biology and genetics and away from so-called mitochondriacs in cancer studies, says Costello. He is a professor of physiology and endocrinology at the Dental School and a researcher at the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center.
In education, traditional scientific training in core fields of cancer research, such as biochemistry, metabolism, and cell physiology, declined while training in molecular technologies of the genomic age grew.
In their new book, Mitochondria and Cancer, Costello and co-editor Keshav Singh, PhD, of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y., document new scientific studies that are sort of hybrids of the genomics and mitochondria-linked investigations. "Recent revelations" from genomic sciences that certain genes and proteins play key molecular roles in malignancy can "provide new dimensions" to roles played by mitochondria in the metabolism of normal and cancer cells, they write.
"Dr. Costello is a person who sees the return of a field of science that was mainstream at the beginning of his scientific career becoming mainstream again in the genomic age," says Christian S. Stohler, DMD,DrMedDent, dean of the Dental School.
Mitochondria contain small amounts of DNA that can be useful to scientists as markers for cancer. Mitochondria also can provide promising targets for chemotherapy and clues to treatments of all types of cancers and tumor suppression.
The function of mitochondria as power plants generating cellular energy units called ATP that power growth and development in living things lends credence to comparative studies of metabolism of mitochondria in a cancer tumor cell and normal cells, according to the new book.
Costello and Singh write in the preface that it is now "critical to establish the role of the mitochondria in the malignant process." They point out that such a hybrid field of advances in cancer research is called "metabolomics." The advent of metabolomics for the detection of cancer and progression of malignancy is dependent upon the elucidation and identification of altered metabolism and mitochondrial function. Thus, this exciting journey in cancer research has barely begun and has a long way to go."
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