The mechanical stress of the heartbeat can keep tumors at bay since this organ, constantly subjected to this process, seems to be protected precisely by its unstoppable movement.

A collaboration of Italian scientists led by the University of Trieste has put forward this suggestive and convincing hypothesis to explain why cancer so rarely attacks the heart of mammals where in humans primary heart tumors appear in only one percent of all examinations Autopsy according to research published in the journal Science.

The growth of tumors that attack the heart directly or that metastasize to it is such a rare circumstance that there must be something in its microenvironment that makes this event difficult.

Therefore a group of scientists coordinated by Giulio Ciucci and Serena Zacchigna transplanted hearts unable to beat, but with blood vessels and well oxygenated into necks of genetically modified mice by injecting tumor cells into both the transplanted and the original heart.

After two weeks in the beating heart the cancer cells had multiplied, replacing most of the healthy cells. While in the transplanted heart they had occupied only about a few percent of the tissue.

In a second experiment, the scientists grew in the laboratory a mouse heart engineered to beat on command and saw that the tumor cells spread more in the static part of the organ than in the one that beats.

The idea is that the intense mechanical stress that the heart undergoes to pump blood stops the tumor cells from spreading. And this mechanism would also underlie the heart’s poor capacity to renew itself, as its cells regenerate at a rate of about one percent per year.

The discovery could suggest new anti-cancer therapies that harness mechanical strain, as the Nesprin-2 protein that identifies mechanical signals and transmits them to the cell nucleus appears to be crucial in inhibiting cell growth in the presence of stress.

This study may also have implications for cardiac fibrosis by explaining why scar tissue is distributed only in some parts of the heart and not in others./tesheshi.com/

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Source: prizrenpost