Husna, Amity University Kolkata
More than one million people around the world are diagnosed with stomach cancer every year. Stomach cancer is an abnormal growth of the cells that tends to develop slowly over many years. Before true cancer develops, the early changes rarely cause any symptoms and therefore go undetected. In its advanced stage, the prognosis is not good and is hard to treat.
25 out of 100 people with stage 3 stomach cancer have survived for five years or more after their diagnosis but sadly for stage 4 cancer, there are no 5-year survival statistics. Understanding the factors which lead to the development of this dreadful stomach cancer and its progression to invasive stages could lead to much needed better treatments.
Recently a research team used a laboratory model of stomach cancer and identified a key molecular regulator that causes the progression of stomach cancer. They studied the sequential changes in human stomach cancer as it progresses from an early, inflammatory stage and discovered that invasive stomach cancers contain a high level of various factors such as cytokines which causes inflammation. They discovered that cytokine TNF was required for the progression of stomach cancer and removing this inflammatory signaling protein TNF at an early stage prevents the progression of cancer to a more severe stage which is much harder to treat. This discovery suggests that stomach cancers may respond to medicines that inhibit TNF. Some medicines are already there for clinical use that can inhibit or block TNF and have already shown success for treating certain other diseases, particularly rheumatoid arthritis.
The discovery that TNF is a critical driver of stomach cancer development has raised the possibility of this cytokine being a therapeutic target for drug development.
Also read:Nuclei of each muscle fiber differ in terms of gene activity
Source:
- Jun T. Low et al. Loss of NFKB1 Results in Expression of Tumor Necrosis Factor and Activation of Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription 1 to Promote Gastric Tumorigenesis in Mice, Gastroenterology (2020). DOI: http://10.1053/j.gastro.2020.06.039
It will be a great coz we are already familiar with tnf inhibitor and excellent if would be beneficial for this hidden enemy express later than it is advance
Wow Husna! Very much informative🤩🤩💯✅😊