Prostate cancer and perhaps other cancers promotes the growth of new nerves and the branching axons that carry their messages, a finding linked to more aggressive tumors, said scientists from Baylor College of Medicine in the first report of the phenomenon that appears today in the journal Clinical Cancer Research
Prior research showed that prostate cancer follows the growth of nerves, but this is the first time that researchers have demonstrated that the tumors actually promote nerve growth.

"This is the first report of this phenomenon," said Dr. Gustavo Ayala, professor of pathology and urology at BCM and first author of the article. "It represents an important new target in prostate cancer therapy, as prostate cancers are more aggressive when neurogenesis is present".

Ayala noted that this finding is comparable to the discovery of angiogenesis or the growth of new blood vessels. Both are part of the wound repair process.

"We also think that axongenesis and neurogenesis is found not only in prostate cancer, but is potentially a more global phenomenon, especially relating to those cancers that grow along nerve paths," said Ayala, also a researcher in the Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center at BCM.

Ayala and colleagues studied the neurogenesis in tissue culture, in human tissues of patients who had had prostate cancer and in comparison to prostate tissues from patients who had died of other ailments. They calculated the density of nerves in human prostate tissues, including those with prostate cancer. They observed that nerve density was considerably higher in prostate cancer patients and in premalignant lesions. As part of the study, he used an entire prostate gland to reconstruct the prostate and enable researchers to see the growth of nerves and axons in three-dimensions, a computerized process that took substantial continuous computer processing.

He and colleagues have even identified a possible method of regulating the growth of new nerves and axons through a protein called semaphorin 4F. Semaphorins are embryologically active molecules that regulate nerve growth and direction. Most disappear in adults, but semaphoring 4F is active in wound repair. When prostate cancer cells overproduce semaphorin 4F, new nerves result. Blocking semaphoring 4F prevents the growth of new nerves.


Posted by: Andria    Source

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