Undoubtedly, if cancer metastasis can be restrained somehow, then we stand closer to combating cancer. Getting an insight into this facet of cancer, scientists at the National Academy of Medicine in Buenos Aires, have reported that there are some factors existing within the tumor itself that seem to impede their spread.
By utilizing bioanalytical techniques such as ion electrospray mass and tandem mass spectrometry, the team was all set to locate factors that blocked metastasis in cultured models of localized cancer. This aspect is termed as concomitant tumor resistance in which specific attributes of the tumor itself prohibit its own progression.
Raúl A. Ruggiero, Ph.D., a biological researcher at the division of experimental medicine at the National Academy of Medicine in Buenos Aires, Argentina, specified, “The main cause of death in cancer patients is associated much more with metastasis rather than with the growth of a localized tumor, which generally can be surgically removed.”
According to the scientists, this feature of concomitant tumor resistance could be attributed to variant types of the amino acid tyrosine. Cancer specimens which comprised the latter did not appear to metastasize, unlike the tumors devoid of these variants.
Ruggiero believed that tyrosine variants may be used as a simple therapeutic measure for patients to cease tumor advancement. Moreover, both meta- and ortho-tyrosine have cancer shielding traits. They apparently act even when present in low concentrations, proliferate naturally in the tumor site and have null side-effects.
Once the findings are affirmed, this new approach for morbid tumors can be implemented. The research is published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.