Voice-over:
Chemotherapy and radiation are the one-two punch often used to fight cancer, but malignant cells often duck this offensive altogether. Now researchers have found cancer cells activate a molecular force field to deflect the treatments aimed at killing them.
Voice-over:
University of Florida researchers say an enzyme called focal adhesion kinase (kye-nace) is one of the key components responsible for cancer’s well-known ability to resist treatment. The scientists discovered that the gene often binds with a protein called VEG-F receptor to create a protective barrier that makes cancer cells difficult to kill. The U-F team is the first to show that by blocking the bond between these chemical co-conspirators in the lab, certain malignant cells can no longer survive. Doctors are now studying how best to target the enzyme and other proteins that interact with it, hoping to eventually interfere with the pathways cancer uses to thrive.
Dr. William Cance / UF Surgeon:
“From the patient’s standpoint, the more that we can characterize their tumor, understand why it behaves like it does, the greater the chance we’ll then be able to go back to the patient with therapeutics. And that laboratory bench to bedside is what our research is all about.”
Voice-over:
Although the researchers knocked out cancer cells’ lifeline by interfering with the enzyme’s ability to bond with the VEG-F protein receptor, the shutdown was selective. U-F doctors discovered that normal cells continued to survive, without this protein to protein binding.
Dr. William Cance / UF Surgeon:
“In the future, different ways of targeting the enzyme itself or targeting the binding between these various proteins will have a major impact on cancer,
I believe.”
Voice-over:
At the University of Florida Health Science Center, I’m Mike Garrison.
