News Article
Baylor College of Medicine (2007, November 14). Zinc Transporters Regulate Pancreatic Cancer.ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 26, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/release/2007/11/071112172150.htm
Primary Scientific Article
Min, L (2007, Nov.20). Aberrant expression of zinc transporter ZIP4 (SLC39A4) significantly contributes to human pancreatic cancer pathogenesis and progression. PNAS vol. 104 no.47
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Summary
This article mainly focused on the connection between high levels of Zinc and Pancreatic cancer. To understand the correlation between the two you first have to understand the basic fundamentals of pancreatic cancer. As the article explains, there are low survival rates for the cancer; the two main reasons being that there is no method for early detection and there is no treatment for the metastatic (when the cancer spreads from its originating cite in the body to other organs) form of the cancer. The only way to effectively cure the cancer is to resection the site where the cancer has spread on the pancreas (i.e. surgery).And more often than not the site of the cancer can’t be removed.
Two important things in researching pancreatic cancer are to look at genes that are more heavily seen in the cell and genes that are involved in numerous pathways. One of those pathways is nutritional uptake. There implies the connection between Zinc and pancreatic cancer. Zinc acts as a catalyst in the cell and is used for transcription amongst other things. The easiest way to explain the connection is as follows; Zinc is a part of the enzymes that are involved in activities such as cell proliferation. And as we all know cell proliferation can be one of the leading factors in causing cancer.
The first thing that the researchers in this article did was to study the pancreatic cells and the correlation between Zinc. There were many things that they found, but the most important were that ZnT and ZIP which are zinc transporters have different reaction to low and high level of zinc than other transporters. Also very important was that SLC39A4 which is encoded by ZIP4 is essential in controlling the intake and output of Zinc in the cell. And in pancreatic cells the zinc levels in the mRNA of ZIP4 were very high. Using this information the researchers conducted their experiment.
The experiment that they performed consisted of using imunodeficient nude mice to show the correlation between Zinc and pancreatic cancer. What they did was analyze the rate of tumor growth between the two groups of mice by injecting one group with MIA-V cells and one with ZIP4 cells. What they found were two main things; an increase in tumor weight and tumor volume. The mouse with ZIP4 accumulated more Zinc which caused cell proliferation. What this showed was the correlation between Zinc, cell proliferation, and pancreatic cancer, thus completing their study.
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The post regarding the levelsof zinc and pancreatic tumors was interesting because we don't tend to think about metals and cancer; but metals play important roles in the activity of enzymes; some proteins are held together by Zinc (the proteins have "zinc fingers" domains that reach out and bind to the zinc); I am wondering if the researchers did any more studies regarding what candidate enzymes that depend on zind for function might be hyper-active in the cells. Did they give any suggestions for what type of enzymes they might look for?
Did they do any other cell culture work in which they tried to inhibit the increased mRNA produced by the ZIP4 gene? what would happen if they were able to inhibit that mRNA? Would the cells be normal?
interesting post!
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