Cure For Cancer? Scientists Find A Potential Cure Through A Protein

A team of international researchers has made an incredible breakthrough in cancer research, identifying a protein that is present, and in fact, over-produced, in almost every cancer, but not in normal cells.

The protein, PARP 14, allows cancer cells to use glucose to act as fuel, allowing almost uncontrollable growth of the cancer. Too much PARP 14 can effect other proteins, known as kinases, that control the cell death cycle.

"What we have discovered is that its role in cancer is to allow cells to harness glucose in a different way from healthy ones, which in turn powers their rapid, uncontrolled growth while also protecting them from the normal cycle of programmed cell death," lead academic Dr. Concetta Bubici from Brunel University London, said.

The protein prohibits the cell death cycle from occurring, essentially making cancer cells immune to this process, making them the unstoppable killing machines that they can become. The cancer stimulates an over-production of PARP 14, which gives the cancer a speed boost in growth.

"Almost all cells in the human body have a strictly limited life," Bubici said. "In stimulating over-production of PARP 14, cancer cells effectively are not only turbo-charged through being able to use glucose to grow and divide, which takes a lot of energy, but also become immune from the natural checks and balances of the cell death cycle, known as apoptosis." 

Scientist have realized that too much of this protein negatively effects the proteins in the body that control apoptosis, but say they believe it can be inhibited.

"So if we can find a way of stopping this over production of PARP 14 we can cure cancer,"  Dr. Salvatore Papa from the Institute of Hepatology London.

This process, of controlling and inhibiting proteins or enzymes, is commonplace in modern medicine. It's used so wildly that common conditions such as stomach ulcers and depression are often treated with it. 

It's already been used to help prevent the recurrence of breast cancer, but the team warned that there is still a large amount of research to complete before a drug to prohibit PARP 14 hits the market.

"The role of excess PARP 14 is very new science. The team found evidence of excess PARP 14 in a wide range of cancers, from solid tumours to blood cancers. However, it would not be good science to claim it is a universal mechanism until further research is complete," the team said in a release.

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