The Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (Standard Research Institute) announced on the 12th that it has proven the decomposition factor of ‘DNA damage fragments’ in the body that cause cancer. It is expected to be of great help in future chemotherapy research and personalized cancer treatment.
Intracellular DNA is continuously damaged every day due to carcinogens and metabolites in the body, but the genetic information in DNA is preserved as cells repair damaged DNA.
The ‘DNA damage fragment’ generated during this repair process causes inflammation or an inappropriate immune response, which causes aging and disease, and in particular, induces resistance to chemotherapy in cancer cells. This DNA damaged fragment is known to gradually decrease in the body over time, but until now, there is no technology to analyze trace DNA fragments, so the cause of the decrease was unknown.
The research team of the Standard Institute of Science and Technology has discovered for the first time in the world that a specific protein contributes to the breakdown of damaged DNA fragments. After regulating the expression of numerous genes in cells, the researchers precisely measured how fragments of DNA damage respond to these changes. In this process, it was confirmed that when the amount of TREX1 protein increased, the number of damaged DNA fragments was greatly reduced. She also demonstrated that the TREX1 protein degrades DNA damaged fragments in vitro by isolating and purifying them in large quantities before reducing damaged fragments.
The results of this research are expected to contribute to the development of personalized cancer treatments by calculating the risk of cancer and the effects of chemotherapy in the future. The standard research institute also plans to further develop the technology to measure trace DNA damage to lay a foothold for clinical application.
Choi Jun-hyeok, senior researcher at the Bioanalytical Standards Group, said, “The results of this study that revealed the mechanism of decomposition of damaged DNA fragments will be useful information for research on cancer treatment.”
