Sydney, January 14 (IANS). Australian research has revealed that DNA repair may play a role in how cancer cells die after radiotherapy. This has been shown in a new research, which can help in improving the treatment of cancer. This will also reveal the success rate in cancer treatment.
According to Xinhua news agency, a statement issued by CMRI said that to find out how cancerous tumor cells die after radiotherapy, scientists at the Children’s Medical Research Institute (CMRI) in Sydney have used live cell microscope technology to detect radiation. Did therapy and then did research on irradiated cells for a week.
Tony Cesare, head of the CMRI Genome Integrity Unit, said: “The results of our research are surprising. The most striking finding in the results is that DNA repair, which normally protects healthy cells, explains how cancer cells respond to radiotherapy. Dies.”
“DNA repair processes can recognize when too much damage has occurred, such as from radiotherapy, and instruct the cancer cell how to die,” he explains.
When DNA is damaged by radiation, it can be repaired by a process called “homologous recombination.” Scientists discovered that during this process, cancer cells die at the time of reproduction (cell division or mitosis).
Cesare said that during cell division, dead cells are not noticed and the immune system ignores it, so the necessary immune response is not activated.
However, cells that dealt with radiation-damaged DNA through other repair mechanisms escaped division, and they also released DNA repair byproducts into the cell.
“To the cell, these byproducts look like a viral or bacterial infection, and then the cancer cell dying in a way that puts the immune system on alert is something we don’t want,” he said.
The team reported that turning off homologous recombination changed the way cancer cells died or were killed, resulting in a stronger immune response.
The researchers said the discovery would make it possible to use drugs that block homologous recombination to force cancer cells treated with radiotherapy to die in a way that alerts the immune system to the existence of cancer. Which needs to be destroyed.
The CMRI statement further said that these findings, published in the journal Nature Cell Biology, may open new opportunities for improving treatments and increasing the rate of successful treatment.
–IANS
MT/AS
