Scientists said on Tuesday they have discovered two proteins that act like an engine for pancreatic cancer cells and might explain why it is such an aggressive disease.
The proteins called CapG and Gelsolin regulate cell movement. Unusually high concentrations are found in cancerous tissue and could be involved in the spread of the disease to other areas of the body.
“These proteins may play a fundamental role in the aggressive spread and growth of pancreatic tumors,” said Dr Eithne Costello of the University of Liverpool in northern England.
About 216,000 new cases of pancreatic cancer are reported each year, most in developed countries, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France.
The Italian singer Luciano Pavarotti was recently diagnosed and had surgery for pancreatic cancer.
“Understanding how it spreads is a priority. We need to know how this disease spreads in order to be able to target new treatments. With these two molecules we have identified players in the ability to spread,” Costello, a molecular biologist, said in an interview.
The disease is most common in people 60 years or older. It is usually not detected until the cancer is in an advanced stage when it has spread beyond the pancreas which makes it more difficult to treat.
The scientists, whose findings are reported online by the journal Gut, studied the proteins that could potentially be new drug targets in samples of cancerous and healthy tissue in the laboratory.
When they lowered the amounts of CapG and Gelsolin in the cancerous tissue it reduced the spread of the cancerous cells. They also found that the amount of CapG found in the nucleus of cancerous cells was proportional to the size of the tumor.
Costello and her team also noticed that patients with low or undetectable levels of Gelsolin had a better prognosis. She added that in order to tackle the disease scientists must do a number of things.
“We need to understand the biology behind it. We need to catch it early and to find improved treatments.”
