An unhealthy diet can predict and even exacerbate the development of cancer. In recent research, scientists from the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology have shown that there is a direct link between the amount of fat that characterizes certain eating habits and thenitric oxidea naturally occurring signaling molecule related to inflammation and the development of cancer.
The results of the study have been published in the scientific journal ACS Central Science.
Nitric Oxide Related to Cancer Development: Here’s What Research Says
“We are trying to understand how subtle changes in the tumor microenvironment affect cancer progression at the molecular level. Cancer is a very complicated disease“, he has declared Anuj Yadavassociate researcher and lead co-author of the study.
Yadav explained that cancer affects not just a few cancer cells, but rather the entire microenvironment, or ecosystem, of the tumor that supports the cells: “Inflammation can play a significant role in this environment. A certain inflammatory response comes from highly processed, calorie-rich, and high-fat foods. We wanted to understand the links between food, inflammation and cancer at the molecular level, so we had to develop advanced probes to be able to visualize these changes.“, Said the expert.
Yadav and the other research co-authors are familiar with the existing study linking increased nitric oxide levels to cancer inflammation. Demonstrating the connection between high-fat diets and nitric oxide levels at the molecular level required the development of a highly sensitive molecular probe capable of imaging deep tissue.
A molecular probe is made up of a set of atoms or molecules exploited to study the properties of adjacent molecules by measuring the interactions between the probe and the structures of interest. But they are not one size fits all, each probe must be adapted to the conditions of its experiment.
“Our group specializes in creating designer molecules, which allow us to observe molecular features that are invisible to the naked eye.“, he has declared Jefferson Chanassociate professor of chemistry at lUniversity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and principal investigator of the study. “We design these bespoke molecules to discover things that weren’t known before ”.
Interesting research findings largely hinged on the molecular probe the team designed. Labeled BL660-NO, this probe is the first of its kind to be used in Nitric Oxide bioluminescence imaging in cancer.
The researchers used the probe to design a diet study in mice, comparing the tumorigenicity of a group of mice carrying breast cancer that were given a high-fat diet (60% of calories from fat) and a group of mice who followed a low-fat diet (10% calories from fat) by measuring nitric oxide levels in both groups.
“As a result of the high-fat diet, we have seen an increase in nitric oxide in the tumor microenvironment“, he has declared Michael Lee, a researcher in the Chan lab and lead co-author of this study. “The implication of this is that the tumor microenvironment is a very complex system and we really need to understand it to understand how cancer progression works. Many factors can go into this, from diet to exercise, external factors that we don’t really know we should really take into account when considering cancer treatments. “
The authors stressed the importance of demonstrating a direct link between a high-fat diet, nitric oxide levels and the development of cancer. With this now known association, there are new implications for cancer diagnosis and treatment: “Without this technology, you wouldn’t see this missing molecular link, ”concluded Chan, who is also a researcher at the Beckman Institute. “Now that we know this is happening, how do we prevent it and how do we improve the situation?”
According to the results published on Annals of Oncology: ” Cancer mortality forecasts for 2022 indicate that there will be a decrease in the mortality rate from ovarian cancer of around 17% in the UK and around 7% in the European Union, compared to 2017, mainly thanks to use of oral contraceptives. Mortality rates of the ten most common cancers are also decreasing, except for pancreatic and lung cancer in women. The results of the study supported by the AIRC Foundation for Cancer Researchand coordinated by the University of Milan together with the University of Bologna “.
Carlo La Vecchiaprofessor of Medical Statistics at the University of Milan, he has declared: ““Long-term use of oral contraceptives reduces the risk of ovarian cancer by about 40% in middle-aged and elderly women. Other factors may also be partially responsible, such as a reduction in the use of hormone replacement therapy ”.
“Improvements in diagnosis, surgery and the use of more effective treatments, such as platinum-based drugs in the 1980s, taxanes in the 1990s and, more recently, gemcitabine, intraperitoneal chemotherapy, bevacizumab and inhibitors of PARP for women with BRCA mutations, can contribute to better survival. However, these factors are minor compared to the long-term protective effect of oral contraceptives. We expect these favorable trends to continue ”.
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