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Viral Infection Mobilizes Enzyme Pair That Tips Stem Cells toward Leukemia
Leukemia cells expressing the enzymes APOBEC3C and ADAR1. [UC San Diego Health Sciences]
January 26, 2021
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Ordinarily, the enzymes APOBEC3C and ADAR1 help us fight off viruses. In the heat of battle, however, they can form a nefarious tag team that pushes preleukemia stem cells to become leukemia stem cells. Here, the “heat of battle” is usually inflammation. It may also refer to the dysregulation that occurs during space travel.
The successive blows landed by APOBEC3C and ADAR1 were observed by researchers at UC San Diego Health and the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. The researchers also found that they could block ADAR1 to prevent the formation of leukemia stem cells.
Credit: UC San Diego Health Sciences
Since stem cells can continually self-regenerate, making more stem cells, and differentiate into many different specialized cell types, they play an important role in our development and health. But there can also be a dark side stem cells can sometimes become cancer stem cells, proliferating out of control and leading to blood cancers, such as leukemia and multiple myeloma. The self-renewing nature of cancer stem cells makes them particularly hard to eradicate, and they re often the reason a blood cancer reoccurs.
Researchers at UC San Diego Health and University of California San Diego School of Medicine are working to understand what pushes pre-cancer stem cells to transform into cancer stem cells and are developing ways to stop that switch.
Designer DNA Helps Treat Multiple Myeloma in Mice by Angela Mohan on January 21, 2021 at 12:20 PM
Targeted approach helps to treat myeloma by silencing IRF4, a gene that allows myeloma stem cells and tumor cells to proliferate and survive.
Past studies have shown that high IRF4 levels are associated with lower overall survival rates for patients with the disease, as per the team of researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Ionis Pharmaceuticals.
Many patients with multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, eventually develop resistance to one treatment after another. That s in part because cancer stem cells drive the disease cells that continually self-renew. If a therapy can t completely destroy these malignant stem cells, the cancer is likely to keep coming back.