Researchers at Mount Sinai’s Tisch Cancer Institute have discovered a new gene that is crucial to the development of colon cancer and have discovered that inflammation in the region surrounding the tumor can aid in the development of tumor cells. In October, the researchers published their findings in Nature Communications.
The “super enhancer,” a complicated region of DNA with a lot of transcriptional machinery that determines whether a cell is malignant, can be programmed by the environment around a colon cancer tumor for the first time, according to research.
The PDZK1IP1 gene, which was not previously recognized as a cancer gene, is controlled by this super enhancer, which is the biggest 1-2% of all enhancers in the cell. When PDZK1IP1 was taken away, the growth of colon cancer was slowed down. This suggests that PDZK1IP1 and its super enhancer could be used to treat cancer.
Colon cancer is the second most lethal and third most prevalent cancer in the US, according to the study’s first author, Royce Zhou, an MD/PhD student at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine. Innovative target discovery is very important because immunotherapies, which have changed the way advanced diseases are treated, have only helped a small number of colon cancer patients.
This study discovered that the tumor microenvironment’s surrounding inflammation activates the super enhancer. The cancer cells can live in an environment where they otherwise wouldn’t be able to because of the inflammation. This study may help us better understand the mechanism at play, as colon cancer is known to increase the likelihood of having an inflammatory bowel illness.
According to senior author Ramon Parsons, MD, PhD, Director of The Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, “What this means for most patients with colon cancer is that inflammation that’s occurring in the tumor is contributing to the tumor’s growth. This stresses the importance of understanding what we can do to curb the inflammatory effects in the colon through prevention or understanding what dietary effects might have on the microenvironment in the colon. “By understanding all these different components, we will have better tools to attempt to avoid the disease,” said the researcher. “In terms of treatment, we have genetic evidence that targeting this gene actually reduces tumors.”
This observation was made by examining live tumor tissue and surrounding healthy tissue right after 15 colon cancer patients underwent surgery. Mr. Zhou said that being able to prepare and look at live cells helped researchers figure out how tumors work and what genetic and biological factors cause colon cancer.
The epigenetic state of that tumor could be measured right away since we have live specimens of living cells that were taken directly from the operation room, said Dr. Parsons. “We couldn’t have achieved this discovery without that infrastructure here at Mount Sinai,” said the researcher.
