China News Service, Beijing, August 20 (Reporter Sun Zifa) The world-renowned academic journal "Nature" recently published a paper on metabolism research, claiming that a by-product of protein and fat metabolism in people aged 60 and above will increase, which will induce Invasive characteristics such as drug resistance and metastasis of cancer cells mean that age-related metabolic disorders may play a role in the increased risk of cancer occurrence and death in the elderly.
The corresponding author of the research paper, John Blenis and his colleagues at Weill Cornell Medical College in the United States, used the serum of 30 healthy donors aged 30 or under and another 30 aged 60 or over. Donor's serum to treat human cancer cell lines. They found that cancer cells treated with serum from older donors gained the ability to migrate, invade, survive and metastasize. These cells also exhibit elevated protein levels associated with aggressive cancers, and resistance to widely used chemotherapy drugs.
The author of the paper further analyzed the metabolites in the serum of elderly and young donors and found that the concentration of the metabolite of protein and fat in the samples of elderly donors was significantly higher. Subsequent genetic analysis showed that higher MMA concentration is related to increased expression of SOX4 gene. SOX4 gene contributes to tumor progression and metastasis formation, and its expression level is higher in aggressive cancers. When SOX4 activity is blocked, MMA does not increase the migration and invasiveness of cancer cells or the resistance to chemotherapy drugs.
"Nature" published a related peer expert opinion article at the same time that the latest research results show that aging will promote the increase of MMA levels in the blood, so that cancer cells can migrate, invade, survive and metastasize. The accumulation of MMA represents a new relationship between aging and cancer progression, and is a potential target for new cancer therapies. (Finish)