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Human breast cancer cells treated with a chemotherapy agent cause neighboring tumor cells (in red) in digestion centers, called lysosomes (in green).
(Image credit: Tonnessen-Murray et al., 2019)
Some cancer cells devour their fellow humans by an act of "cannibalism", and now scientists have captured the terrible act in front of a camera.
New videos show the man breast cancer cells in a lab dish being sucked into the belly of another cancer cell that had been treated with a chemotherapy drug. Compartments within the structure of the cannibalistic cell, called lysosomes, break down the cells consumed with a fatal cocktail of digestive enzymes.
In the sequence, the engulfed cells are reduced to tiny nuggets before finally disappearing.
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The researchers captured these microscopic horror films while trying to learn how some tumor cells survive chemotherapy and promote cancer relapse along the line.
Chemotherapy drugs destroy cancer cells by damaging their DNA. But despite the attack, some breast cancer cells are resistant to chemotherapy because they maintain a healthy copy of a gene called TP53. Rather than perishing, these resilient cells enter a dormant state where they do not replicate but still produce chemical signals that ignite inflammation and stimulate subsequent tumor growth.
Scientists from the Tulane University School of Medicine wanted to know more about the survival of sneaky cells. They treated human breast cancer cells cultured in laboratory dishes with doxorubicin, a chemotherapy drug, and then mixed them with untreated cells. The treated cells went dormant (they stopped replicating); even in this case, these dormant cells increased the size of their lysosomes and the activated genes normally used by white blood cells to engulf invading pathogens. The researchers discovered that newly equipped cells frequently ate untreated cells that were lying around nearby, a ruthless behavior that could give them the energy and materials needed to cope with a subsequent relapse.
The researchers observed the cannibalistic behavior of cells developed in a murine model of breast cancer, as well as in humans. lung cancer and bone cancer cell lines cultured in laboratory dishes.
"We discovered that doxorubicin-treated cells engulfed untreated cells, but not the reverse or untreated cells," said Live Science, co-author of the study, James Jackson, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
"Inhibiting this process [of cancer cell cannibalism] can offer new therapeutic opportunities, "he added. declaration. For example, it is well known that breast cancer patients whose cancer cells have a normal TP53 gene suffer from low survival rates, he explained, but perhaps the fact of preventing the tumor cells of these patients to eat could help improve their response to chemotherapy.
The results were published today (17 September) in the Journal of Cell Biology.
Originally published on Science live.
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