Scientists have transformed the white fat cells, which store energy, into “beige” fat, which burns calories by generating heat. Once implanted, they “starved” the tumors, leaving them without resources and thus defeating five different types of cancer in laboratory experiments.
Cancer is the Croanic Bola of the Photo World: Adevărul (Archive)
Plastic liposuction and surgery may seem unrelated to the treatment of cancer, but have actually inspired a new revolutionary approach. By transforming the usual fat into beige fat, with high energy, with the help of CRISPR genetic editing technique, the researchers created a type of cell that consumes the nutrients, defeating and starving the tumors, writes news.ro.
To test their effectiveness, scientists have implanted these modified fat cells near the tumors, just as the plastic surgeons transfer fat from one area of the body to another. The result? The modified adipose cells have rapidly consumed nutrients, lacking the tumor cells of the fuel they need to survive. Remarkably, this approach worked even when the fat cells were placed away from the tumor place in mice.
Because the method is based on existing medical procedures, it could open the way for a faster transition to clinical use as a new promising therapy.
“Usually, we already remove the fat cells by liposuction and put them in place through plastic surgery“, Stated Nadav Ahituv, PHD, director of the UCSF Institute for Human Genetics and professor within the Department of Bioinginery and Therapeutic Sciences. He is the main author of the work, which was published in Nature Biotechnology. “These fat cells can be easily handled in the laboratory and safely placed back into the body, which makes them an attractive platform for cell therapy, including cancer,” A he explained.
How the idea was born
Ahituv and Dr. Hai Nguyen, his doctoral student, were aware of the studies that showed that exposure to cold could suppress cancer in mice. A remarkable experiment has even shown that it could help a patient with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Scientists concluded that cancer cells were hungry because the cold activated brown fat cells, which use nutrients to cause heat. But cold therapy is not a viable option for cancer patients with fragile health.
Therefore, Ahituv and Nguyen have resorted to the idea of using beige fat, betting that they can change it to burn enough calories, even in the absence of the cold, to deprive the fuel tumors they need to develop.
Crispr unlocks the power of beige fat
Nguyen, who is the first author of the work, used CRISPR to activate genes that are latent in white fat cells, but active in brown fat cells, hoping to find those that would transform white fat cells into those more hungry beige fat cells. A gene called UCP1 came out first.
Then Nguyen cultivated UCP1 beige fat cells and cancer cells in a Petri plate. The cancer cells were at the bottom, and the fat cells above them, in separate compartments that held the separate cells, but forced them to divide the nutrients.
The results were shocking.
“In our first experiment, very few cancer cells survived. I thought I was wrong – I was sure it was a mistake ”confesses Ahituv. “So I repeated it several times and continued to see the same effect ”he told.
The beige fat cells have been imposed on two different types of breast cancer cells, as well as on cancer cells of colon, pancreas and prostate.
But the researchers still did not know if the beige beige cells were working in a more realistic context.
Adipose cell therapy
Thus, scientists have resorted to fat organs, which are coherent agglomerations of cultivated cells, to see if they could overcome tumor cells when implanted near tumors in mice.
The approach worked against breast cancer, as well as pancreatic and prostate cancer cells. The cancer cells died of hunger while the fat cells swallowed all the available nutrients.
The implanted beige beige cells were so strong that they suppressed pancreatic and mammary tumors that were genetically prone to develop cancer.
It worked even when the beige fat cells were implanted away from the breast cancer cells.
To see how it would work in human tissue, Ahituv and Nguyen collaborated with Jennifer Rosenbluth, a breast cancer at UCSF. Rosenbluth had accumulated a library of breast cancer mastectomies containing both fat and cancer cells. “Because the breast has a lot of fat, we could get fat from the same patient, change the fat and cultivate it in a single Trans-Well experiment with the breast cancer cells.”said Ahituv.
Cancer has “favorite diets”
The cancers have “Favorite diets“So the researchers designed the fat for “To eat” only certain nutrients. Certain forms of pancreatic cancer, for example, are based on uridine when glucose is rare. Thus, they scheduled the fat to eat only uridine and easily defeated these pancreatic cancer cells.
This suggests that fat could be adapted to the nutritional preferences of any type of cancer.
Adipose cells – the future of living cell therapy?
According to Ahituv, adipose cells have many advantages in terms of living cell therapies.
Adipose cells are easy to obtain from patients. They grow well in the laboratory and can be modified to express different genes and to assume different biological roles. And they behave well once they are restored in the body, they do not move away from where they were implanted or disturb the immune system.
“In the case of fat cells, there is less interaction with the environment, so that there are very few risks for the cells to drain in the body, where they could cause problems”, said Ahituv.
Fat cells can also be programmed to issue signals or perform more complicated tasks.
And their ability to overcome cancer even when they are not right next to the tumors could prove invaluable to treat hard-to-reach cancers, such as glioblastoma, which affects the brain, as well as many other diseases.
Beyond cancer: Unlimited potential of modified fat
“We believe that these cells could also be designed to detect blood glucose and release insulin, diabetes, or absorb iron in diseases where there is excess iron, such as hemochromatosis.”Ahituv shows. “The sky is the limit for these fat cells“, Says the researcher enthusiastically.
