2023-06-04 03:44:01
This Friday begins the annual Chicago Cancer Congress, where the main innovations concerning cancer will be exhibited, some of which are very important, such as the one discovered by French scientists. They recently revealed the importance of iron and copper in the formation of tumors and the spread of metastases.
It is not necessarily known, but our human body contains a variety of metals, such as iron, which allows us to breathe, or even copper. It also contains nickel, zinc, magnesium and calcium. They are provided by our diet, explains Raphael Rodriguez, researcher at the CNRS and the Institut Curie in Paris. These trace elements are generally less studied than proteins or nucleic acids, as they are much smaller than a DNA molecule or a protein.
A French team of researchers has studied the metals naturally present in the human body and has just discovered that copper and iron play a role in the development of tumors and metastases. This is a major advance that will be presented from June 2 at the annual Chicago Cancer Congress, an unmissable event where major research discoveries are presented.
Until now, research has not extensively investigated the role played by these metals in cancer. Today, Dr. Raphael Rodriguez’s team demonstrates that iron, copper and the associated chemical reactions have a negative impact in the event of cancer. “This increases tumor size and the ability of cells to form metastases. It’s a surprising discovery, even for us, and it’s all new to us,” he admits.
Anti-metastatic molecules to compensate for the effects of iron?
This breakthrough was published in the prestigious American scientific journal Nature. A question now arises that these researchers know the effect of metals in the case of cancer: should copper and especially iron intake be reduced for cancer patients? Dr. Raphael Rodriguez answers: “No longer giving iron is a problem, because our body needs iron for its vital functions. Of course, there is a way to give iron to patients who suffer from anemia. There are also certain molecules which are already used for other treatments, such as metformin for type 2 diabetes, and which might have an anti-inflammatory and anti-metastatic effect. »
These diabetes drugs already exist; the objective would now be to design new ones. Raphaël Rodriguez hopes to achieve this in his laboratories at the Curie Anticancer Institute. “The particularity of this laboratory is that we have an infrastructure where we can carry out chemical synthesis, cell culture, experiments and molecular biology to carry out cell biology”, explains the researcher. After analyzing the effects of copper and iron on cancers, they still have a lot of work to do, including the analysis of the effects of manganese, cobalt, nickel and even zinc.
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