Ruining the Environment

For anything to thrive it needs the right environment, whether it’s a plant, a child, or even a cancer. So identifying the essential elements of that environment might help researchers hamper the development of conditions like the particularly persistent pancreatic cancer. A new study examined how genes are regulated and expressed in cancer stem cells – those that persist even after treatment. They discovered that a protein called SMARCD3 (highlighted in red in the human pancreatic cancer pictured), usually part of tumour-suppressing machinery, is key to tumours developing resistance to treatment. It's amplified in cancer cells and modulates gene expression to influence cell metabolism, creating the perfect platform for pancreatic cancer growth and treatment resistance. When it was blocked in mouse tumour cells, survival improved and tumours shrank back, particularly when done in addition to chemotherapy. Perhaps interfering with SMARCD3 could counter cancer growth, prevent treatment resistance, and improve prognosis for patients.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by L. Paige Ferguson and colleagues
• Department of Pharmacology, University of California San Diego School of Medicine, La Jolla, CA, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Nature Communications, January 2023