As for surviving radiation, slow gigrade really knows what he is and shruggs the dose that will destroy most other life forms. Now, researchers are using this knowledge to find ways to protect healthy cells during cancer treatment.
A team led by Harvard Medical School Ameya Kirtane and Jianling Bi of the University of Iowa have isolated the superpower in the form of messenger RNA.
When people receive radiation therapy for cancer, it’s not just tumors. Radiation causes DNA destruction in healthy cells, causing massive cell death and inflammation. This can cause unpleasant side effects of treatment.
“It can manifest as simple as mouth pain. It can limit the ability of a person to eat because they suffer so badly from pain, weight loss or bleeding, and it requires hospitalization, so it is very painful.” say.
Despite cute monikers like mospiglets and water bears, microscopic, 8-legged animals are delayed gigrades It’s famous for being difficult. Aside from surviving the hottest settings of the oven and 7.5 GPA pressure, they can handle Approximately 1000 times Dose of ionizing radiation that kills humans.
They can do this because of their ability to produce the unique protein DSUP (short for damage inhibition).
Scientists have turned to this protein as a potential aid in cancer treatment It was discovered in 2016and now they’re one step closer.
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That 2016 study showed that when expressed in human cells, DSUP reduces X-ray-induced DNA damage by about 40%, so researchers hope that it can protect cancer patients from serious side effects of treatment.
However, DSUP must be in the nucleus of a cell for it to function. Delivering this protein directly to each cell is not feasible, and integrating the DSUP gene directly into DNA is a unique risk.
“One of the strengths of our approach is that we use messenger RNAs that only express proteins temporarily. Therefore, it is considered to be much safer than the kind of DNA that is integrated into the genome of a cell.” Kirtane say.
By wrapping mRNA in specific polymer lipid nanoparticles (one design ideal for the colon and an ideal design for the mouth), they were able to smuggle the chains into lab-grown cells that were used to generate large quantities of DSUP before disintegration.
“We thought that perhaps by combining these two systems (polymers and lipids) we could make the most of both worlds and get very strong RNA delivery. That’s what we saw in essence.” say.
Importantly, delivering DSUP in mRNA “recipe” format prevents the protective device from sneaking into the cells.
To ensure this worked, the team injected the mice with mRNA encoding the DSUP. Mice received approximately the same radiation as that which could be administered to human cancer patients 6 hours later.
One group of mice received mRNA treatment and oral radiation. The other is in the rectum. Radiation was also given without DSUP protection to provide a baseline for comparison.
The “rectal” group experienced approximately half of the radiation-induced double-stranded DNA rests compared to controls that did not receive DSUP protection. The “mouth” group had about a third of the rest of their peers. And it appears that mRNA treatment had no effect on tumor burden.
This research is just the beginning. The sample size is very small, and of course, it is not possible to predict how the human body will respond to treatment based solely on testing of lab-grown cells or mice. But that alone is enough to encourage further investigation. In particular, they know that mRNA can be safely put into cells without conferring cancer benefits.
“The use of DSUP mRNA delivery could be adopted for several other clinical applications, including protection of normal tissues from DNA-damaged chemotherapy or progressive degeneration of certain tissues, predisposition to cancer, chromosomal instability, and hypersensitivity to DNA damage agents.” write.
“In addition to cancer-related applications, the use of DSUP proteins can be extended as a prevention against systemic or nuclear radiation exposure to space radiation.”
This study was published in Natural Biomedical Engineering.
