New research at the University of Aberdeen has identified what leads cancer to spread through the body with hopes the study could lead to new drugs to treat the disease.
Postgraduate student Johanna Amunjela is among the first in the world to investigate the role that specific proteins have in how the disease develops.
She has led the new research, funded by the University of Aberdeen’s Elphinstone PhD Scholarship scheme, which focuses on cell migration in cancer.
Ms Amunjela has found that changes in the behaviour of specific Popdc proteins can affect how readily cancer tissue spreads.
Ms Amunjela said: “We are among only a handful of people in the world who are actively investigating the role of Popdc 1, 2 and 3 proteins in the spread of tumours.
“So far we can say that these proteins seem to be important in determining the rate that cells divide and migrate which means that they affect the likelihood of cancer spreading to other organs.
“It seems that these molecules act as a switch where they can affect the rate of division or migration.”
This study is the first to identify these proteins as possible targets in future cancer treatments.
Ms Amunjela added: “These proteins represent relatively specific potential targets for new drug therapies, and it is hoped that Popdc-directed drugs will be more specifically targeted to the affected sites with less damage to healthy tissue.”
The research looked at the proteins – ‘Popeye domain containing proteins 1, 2 and 3 or Popdc1, 2 and 3’ – in different types of tissue to investigate if they behaved differently in different cell lines.
The study looked at the impact of proteins in breast, gastric and some brain cancer cells and found their behaviour differed according to the type of tissue they were in.
Ms Amunjela said: “It is very interesting to find that the effect of these proteins varies according to the type of cancer we looked at. Not only are we considering these molecules as potential drug targets, we are also learning how they act in different types of cancer.
“As a result, this research may pave the way in personalised medicine for tailored, cancer-specific therapies by potentially switching off the tumour’s ability to spread. “
The study has been supervised by Dr Steve Tucker, Senior Teaching Fellow in Pharmacology at the university.
Dr Tucker said: “The spread of cancer to other organs or lymph nodes is a critical stage in cancer development. The spread of a tumour to other organs or lymph nodes makes treatment more difficult and makes the progression of the cancer less predictable and more lethal.
“Our research aims to identify unique changes within certain types of cancer that increase the likelihood of spread, so these can be targeted therapeutically”.
The work has been carried out with the added contribution of final year undergraduate students, Joanna Mitchell and Fiona McKissock, who recently undertook projects with the research group.
Ms Amunjela will present these exciting findings at the Genes and Cancer conference held at Cambridge University from April 13 to 15, 2015.
