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An enzyme that normally helps break down stored fats becomes highly active in some cancer cells and makes them more likely to spread, researchers have found.
When the enzyme, called monoacylglycerol lipase (MAGL), goes into overdrive in cancer cells, it breaks down stored fats to produce large amounts of free fatty acids, which are the building blocks of cell membranes and of fatty molecules that serve as signals between cells. These free fatty acids then produce other smaller molecules that promote cancer growth and progression, the study authors noted.
The finding that stored fats in cancer cells can cause them to become more aggressive offers a possible explanation for the reported link between obesity and cancer, according to the researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in California. They also said MAGL may offer a new target for treating aggressive forms of cancer or for preventing cancer progression.
“Historically, research has focused on the mechanisms leading to cancer formation, and therapies have focused on taking out cancer cells. But here we were looking for pathways that lead to cancer aggressiveness,” corresponding author Benjamin Cravatt, chair of the Scripps Research Department of Chemical Physiology, said in a news release.
He noted that people who eat high-fat foods are constantly introducing free fatty acids into their bodies.
“We have shown that cancer cells have their own pathways to produce free fatty acids, which will enable them to become more aggressive. Less malignant cancer cells do not appear to have adopted an autonomous pathway to increase their own pools of free fatty acids. Thus, taking free fatty acids from the diet could assist these cells in developing a more malignant phenotype,” Cravatt said.
The study was published in the Jan. 8 issue of the journal Cell.

Adding the drug cetuximab to neoadjuvant chemotherapy can shrink tumors and boost the odds of successful surgery in colorectal cancer patients with inoperable metastatic liver lesions, new research suggests.
Tumors spread to other parts of the body in more than half of patients with colorectal cancer. Most commonly, the cancer spreads to the liver. Removing the tumors in the liver can cure patients, but about 80 percent have inoperable disease and a poor prognosis when they see doctors, the researchers explain in the Nov. 24 online edition of The Lancet Oncology.
Previous research suggests that neoadjuvant treatment with irinotecan- or oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy can make surgery more likely to succeed. The new study aimed to see if addition of the drug cetuximab, also known as Erbitux, would help patients even more.
The study authors, Gunnar Folprecht, from University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus in Dresden, Germany, and colleagues from Germany and Austria found that treatment with cetuximab boosted the proportion of tumors that could be treated with surgery. The treatment, in general, didn’t have serious side effects.
“Our data suggest that treatment with cetuximab and chemotherapy results in high confirmed tumor response rates … leading to … increased respectability,” Folprecht and colleagues wrote. “In the light of recent studies in metastatic colorectal cancer, the value of further treatment intensification will be investigated.”

Normally, your cells grow and die in a controlled way. Cancer cells keep forming without control. Chemotherapy is drug therapy that can stop these cells from multiplying. However, it can also harm healthy cells, which causes side effects.

During chemotherapy you may have no side effects or just a few. The kinds of side effects you have depend on the type and dose of chemotherapy you get. Side effects vary, but common ones are nausea, vomiting, tiredness, pain and hair loss. Healthy cells usually recover after chemotherapy, so most side effects gradually go away.

Your course of therapy will depend on the cancer type, the chemotherapy drugs used, the treatment goal and how your body responds. You may get treatment every day, every week or every month. You may have breaks between treatments so that your body has a chance to build new healthy cells. You might take the drugs by mouth, in a shot or intravenously.

Chemotherapy can bring major changes to your life. It can affect your overall health, threaten your sense of well-being, disrupt your daily routines, and put a strain on your relationships. It is normal and understandable for you and your family to feel tearful, anxious, angry, or depressed. There are ways to cope with these emotional “side effects,” just as there are ways to cope with the physical side effects of chemotherapy. You can draw support from many sources.

In contrast, being married — or never married — seems to improve your odds the most.
An analysis of the records of nearly 3.8 million cancer patients found that married people fared the best after being diagnosed with cancer, while separated spouses were about one-third less likely to survive for a decade.
The stress of a separation seems to be key, said study author Gwen Sprehn, a neuropsychologist at the Indiana University School of Medicine.
“There may be a critical period early in the course of cancer when increases in stress have a particularly adverse effect on the immune system’s ability to clear or suppress cancer,” she said.
Researchers have known that marriage, in general, is good for a person’s health, perhaps because spouses provide physical and emotional support before and during illness.
The findings, which will appear online Aug. 24 in Cancer, will be published in the Nov. 1 print issue of the journal.
After researchers made statistical adjustments to account for possible errors, they found that 36.8 percent of separated people lived for 10 years after cancer diagnosis, compared to 57.5 percent of those who were married. Almost 41 percent of widowed people live for a decade, as did 45.6 percent of those who were divorced and 51.7 percent of those who were never married.
The number of those separated was very small compared to the other groups — 51,857 compared to 2,184,055 who were married.
Why might separated people die earlier than the widowed?
“The difference may be that the death of a spouse is closer to a natural phase in life,” Sprehn said. “Coupled with that, those who are widowed may have a stronger support system, both personally and culturally. Separation, even if it is ‘for the better,’ is not an expected life event and may be preceded by a period of great conflict.”
Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, director of Ohio State University College of Medicine’s Division of Health Psychology, said the study is well-done and jibes with her own research on how the most stressful break-ups affect the health of spouses.
“Many studies have now shown that stress and depression reliably enhance inflammation,” which can make cancer worse, she said.
The study leaves plenty of questions, however, apparently because of the limitations of the statistics the researchers used, said Hui Liu, an assistant professor of sociology at Michigan State University.
The research didn’t take into account the marital history of those surveyed or some other details. “Previous research suggests that remarriages provide less health benefit than first marriages,” she said. Also, studies suggest that longer marriages may have more health benefits, she noted, and the bad effects of marriages that fall apart may diminish over time.
*This is a quote of HealthDay News Monday, August 24, 2009 .*