The sharing economy
When cells lack a critical signaling enzyme (liver cells on the slide are stained blue), they resort to communicating and sharing resources via vesicles (green). This strategy allows cells to multiply even in environments that do not allow other cells to do so. Cancer cells can use the same tactics. Credit: UC San Diego Health Sciences
It wasn’t that long ago that managers looked at each other in something they call the sharing economy. Basically, it’s about not having to own things, just having access to them. As an example, he states that much of what we own, we only use sporadically. He cites a drill as an example. It makes more sense to share it with those who also need it only occasionally. In addition to the demonstrable increased efficiency of the resources used, sharing has the side effect of awakening human belonging and building communities. From a three-day-old study published in a journal eLife it follows that the shared economy was discovered and used by our cells a long time ago.
It started when a pathologist from the University of California, San Diego noticed a certain detail in liver cells. Namely, that the cells exchange something with each other, and that they do this through titer vesicles. Scientists use the term vesicles for them. This is interesting in itself, but even more interesting is that the mutual exchange of information bags has to do with the sharing of important molecules having the function of an enzyme. And that this sharing allows the community of cells to reproduce even under conditions that are unsuitable for reproduction for other cells.
Why is this so interesting?
In order for us to see the connections, it is necessary to point out that there are many and many situations where it is necessary to start or support the multiplication of cells in the tissues. In the same way, it is necessary to slow down cell proliferation with something over time. Both happen under the control of molecular triggers and switches. Professor Gen-Sheng Feng of the UC San Diego School of Medicine and the leader of the research team had previously discovered that his mouse cells could reproduce even when they were genetically damaged to the point that they lacked a critical enzyme to reproduce satisfactorily. The necessary substance that triggers multiplication is the Shp2 protein. It is a molecule that tells the liver cells when the tissue needs to be regenerated and when they should start dividing.
Gen-Sheng Feng, professor of pathology and molecular biology: “Cells in the liver multiply faster and more efficiently than any other cells in the body. They are an ideal object for investigating the processes that control cell division.” Photo credit: UC San Diego
In the present work, about which this article has already been described, scientists have already described what it is that even handicapped liver cells are capable of multiplying, despite the fact that they lack the necessary equipment for this (Shp2). Actually, it’s simple – the relevant instruction and other details are passed on to each other by the cells in a kind of whisper. From the healthy cells, the instruction goes to the handicapped ones through those shared vesicles.
The essence of the current discovery is that even under unfavorable conditions, cells can multiply. In fact, only those that use the mutual sharing of the necessary molecules with enzymatic activity manage to do it. In other words, liver cells, as cells of the detoxification apparatus, are definitely not a bed of roses, and yet, even under difficult conditions in an environment full of poisons, they manage to multiply and constantly renew our liver.
And now watch out, we’re coming to the finale. The same mechanism (understand the exchange of vesicles with the necessary biomolecules) is also practiced by human cancer cells capable of multiplying like a plant. It is probably this sharing strategy that helps them to reproduce in an environment of toxic cytostatics, after which all other cells lose their desire to reproduce.
Conclusion
If it is true that cancer cells manage to circumvent environmental adversity by sharing vesicles with each other, then this also means that the ability of cancer cells to initiate tumor growth is not part of their own identity, but is a condition that is induced upon them. And if something can be induced, it should also be able to be “turned off”. We are probably not far from the truth if we dare to forecast that we are on the threshold of a completely new approach to dealing with certain types of cancer. The treatment that fits the proverb “strategic weakening of the adversary by preventing him from using the advantages of the shared economy”.
Literature
Kota Kaneko et al, Identification of CD133+ intercellsomes in intercellular communication to offset intracellular signal deficit, eLife (2023). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.86824
2023-10-21 00:32:19
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