Scientists have discovered a key chemical process in the body which sometimes goes wrong and causes cancer, a finding that could lead to the development of new drugs and therapies to treat such disease.
Researchers at the Brown University and Rhode Island Hospital in the US found that prolactin receptors — membranes proteins that play a vital role in cellular communications — are like cellular wiring and susceptible to short circuits that can cause cancer. Prolactin receptors, which stimulate the mammary glands in women to produce milk, are also found in other organs including the lung and the colon. The researchers, who detailed their study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, found the chemical reaction inside the cell, called “acetylation”, is triggered by the binding of the arrival of the prolactin hormone at the receptor.
This process can draw prolactin receptors together into a structure called a “dimer”. Like a pair of chopsticks, this dimer structure is just right to pick up growth factors in the body that can lead to cancerous growth, said Y. Eugene Chin of the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.
“Our findings may provide an important clue about how to develop drugs to break down receptor dimers in breast cancer therapy,” said Chin, a senior author of the study that also involved researchers from Zhejiang University School of Medicine in China and the University of Rochester in New York. Normally, a shared positive electrical charge and the resulting mutual repulsion keeps prolactin receptors from coming together.