Credit: Hauke S. Hillen
A newly developed compound starves cancer cells by attacking their power plants - the so-called mitochondria. The new compound prevents the genetic information within mitochondria from being read. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and the University of Gothenburg report in their study that this compound could be used as a potential anti-tumour drug in the future; not only in mice but also in human patients.
Mitochondria provide our cells with energy and cellular building blocks necessary for normal tissue and organ function. For a long time, the growth of cancer cells was assumed to be independent of mitochondrial function. However, this long-standing dogma has been challenged in recent years. Especially cancer stem cells are highly dependent on mitochondrial metabolism. Due to the central role of mitochondria for normal tissue function, and because drugs that target mitochondr
Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden report in the journal
Nature that they have developed novel first-in-class inhibitors that compromise mitochondrial function in cancer cells. Treatment with the inhibitors stopped cancer cells from proliferating and reduced tumour growth in mice, without significantly affecting healthy cells. We are excited to have shown that this novel principle for cancer treatment works in animal models and hopefully the inhibitors can now be developed further for anti-cancer treatment in humans, says Nils-Göran Larsson, professor at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics at Karolinska Institutet, who led the study.
Mitochondria are the power plants of our cells. They are essential for converting the energy in the food we eat into the common energy currency that is required for a variety of cellular functions. Cancer cells are critically dependent on mitochondria, not only for providing energy but also for producing a variety of