Rosario Scientists Achieve Important Advances Against The Most Lethal Liver Cancers

The achievement is of researchers from the Conicet and the UNR. Hepatocarcinoma is the second most lethal cancer. The team is led by the biologist Christian Favre.

Scientists from Conicet and the National University of Rosario (UNR) managed to stop the progression of hepatocellular carcinoma, one of the most lethal liver cancers, by removing glucose and administering a drug.

The study was carried out by a team of researchers from the Institute of Experimental Physiology (Ifise, Conicet-UNR), led by the biologist Christian Favre. Due to the relevance of the work, the study was published by Scientific Reports magazine.

"Hepatocellular carcinoma or hepatocarcinoma is a liver cancer that ranks second among the most lethal cancers, largely due to its high intra and extra hepatic metastatic speed," Favre said.

He explained that in this case "the migration and invasion of cells is studied, how they were modified before an energy stress, which is basically to get the cells their food."

"In the middle of the crop, we limit the amount of sugar and study the processes that the tumor cell unties, in the face of that sign of removing sugar," the scientist added.

Favre said that since 2009 they have been studying "at the molecular level how normal and tumor cells of the liver take different paths when subjected to energy stress".

"For example," he added, "they stop dividing and activate death programs, or, in this case, they slow down their movement, we analyze which proteins detect these metabolic changes and unleash these responses," he said.

He added that in hepatocarcinoma cells, they tested "as an AMPK activation strategy using metformin, a drug used as a hypoglycaemic agent in diabetic patients, in combination with the metabolic condition of restricting glucose from the cell culture medium." AMPK are the abbreviations that make reference to the enzymatic group capable of regulating the organism at the cellular energy level, explained the scientist.

"We achieved that AMPK, which seems to be especially inactive in this type of tumor, is hyperactive at levels that are not reached in any other way and can then lead to new antitumor responses," Favre said.

When the migratory and invasive capacity of these cells was analyzed, it was found that "in the absence of glucose, plus the presence of metformin in their culture medium, the cells migrated and invaded less than under normal conditions," he said.

"In other words, when giving an energy crisis to the tumor cell, it responds in several ways, but one of the ways in which it responds is by migrating, moving at a lower speed, which reduces the ability of the cells to metastasize," finished