The key has been found that could lead to new treatments for breast cancer and even prevent it: it is a protein that causes the death of diseased cells before they complete the process of transformation into cancer cells. Protein acts through an inflammatory process that also mobilizes the immune defenses en masse, making it easier for them to recognize and eliminate damaged cells. The result, published in the journal Nature, could help develop treatments that target this protein, called Mre11.
The research was coordinated by the American University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Every time a cancer cell divides, it suffers damage to its DNA. These damaged cells are usually perceived as threats by the body, which activates a damaged DNA ‘sensor’, called cGAS, capable of rallying the cells of the immune system to find and eliminate the problem.
In 2020, however, it was discovered that this sensor is ‘locked away’, that is, it is always in a deactivated state to prevent it from triggering inflammatory responses unless absolutely necessary. Researchers led by Min-Guk Cho and Rashmi Kumar then looked for the key that allows cGAS to free itself from its ‘prison’, finding it in the Mre11 protein.
In this way they also discovered that, by interacting with each other, the sensor and the key protein initiate a specialized form of cell death called necroptosis: unlike other forms of cell death, necroptosis also triggers the inflammatory response, and therefore activates the immune system which is thus able to identify cancer cells or those that are about to become cancerous.
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