Key Steps In Cell Division Reveal New Research On Cancer Division

An international group of scientists led by a group from the University of Leicester has recently announced a new advance in understanding certain mechanisms related to cancer and how it can be targeted more effectively with new treatments.

Two papers published in the same issue of the Journal of Cell Biology both suggest how a better understanding of the mechanics of cell division can reveal potential new targets for cancer therapy.

"Together, these two papers provide exciting new insights on how cells ensure that they faithfully pass on the right amount of genetic material to their offspring when they divide. They also highlight potential new targets for the development of novel cancer treatments," said Professor Fry, Director of Research in College of Medicine, Biological Sciences and Psychology at Leicester, in a news release. "These papers identify a series of key steps that orchestrate the mechanics of cell division and highlight novel targets that could be inhibited to block cancer cell division. Through working with outstanding collaborators in Leicester and across the world, our future goal is to exploit this new understanding of the biology that underlies cell division to develop more effective medicines that will allow better treatments for patients with a wide range of cancers."

The researchers' goal were to gain a new understanding of just how cell division that's involved in the normal cells goes wrong during cancer, and what targeted treatments or medicines might help to effectively eradicate tumors while causing less side-effects for cancer patients.

Dr. Laura O'Regan lead the first of the two papers, discussing how an enzyme known as Nek6 controls the stability of the structural scaffold with genetic material encoded on separated chromosomes. Nek6 then leads recruitment onto the scaffold of a chaperone known as Hsp70. Chaperones are proteins that act as cellular guardians folding proteins into their correct shape and assembling them into functional complexes. Chaperones also help protect cancer cells in the stressful environment of a tumor cell and help keep them alive.

Because of this, there is a growing interest in the development of chaperone inhibitors as novel anti-cancer therapies. The findings in the paper detail how best to use new drugs to selectively kill cancer cells, while the second paper demonstrates how the enzyme that belongs to the same family as Nek6, Nek5, provides a key function in enabling a timely assembly of the structural scaffold that's required for chromosome division with loss of Nek5 that may result in genetic damage.

More information regarding the findings can be seen here.