Nat Commun: Neutral granulocytes may promote tumor cell death, but that may not be a good thing!

December 11, 2020 // -- White blood cells are a key part of the body's many immune system responses, and in a recent study published in the international journal Nature Communications, scientists from Pennsylvania State University and other institutions found a special type of White blood cells may promote brain cancer tissue death, but this does not seem to be good news, a large number of brain cancer tissue deaths or directly related to the decline in survival rates of patients with malignant glioblastoma, a common fatal brain cancer in adults.
researcher Wei Li said: 'We looked at the causes of tissue death called necrosis, and scientists believe that hypoxia caused by insufficient blood supply due to rapid tumor growth may cause cell necrosis, and in this study we looked at the molecular processes that induce tissue death.
glioblastoma patients with higher levels of necrosis tend to have lower survival rates, and researchers hope to delve deeper into the molecular mechanisms that drive tissue death to help develop new therapies that improve the prognosis of survival for these cancer patients.
Photo Source: Penn State College of Medicine Researchers say iron death is a particular type of regulatory cell death that induces tissue death, and in the paper, researchers analyzed tumor tissue samples from animal models of glioblastoma under a microscope and found that neutropocytes and white blood cells appear to exist in the same tissue region as dead tumor cells.
to clarify whether these cells were part of the tissue death process, the researchers reduced levels of neogenic granulocytes in the animal model body, which in turn reduced the level of necrotic death in the cancer model body.
the researchers isolated the white blood cells and tested their ability to fight cancer cells in the lab, finding that the presence of neutral granulocytes could block the survival of cancer cells. 'By evaluating data from patients with glioblastoma to reveal the key role that neogenital granulocytes play in tissue necrosis, we confirm our theory that the presence of genetic signals of large numbers of nexual granulocytes and iron death is directly related to pathological evidence of necrosis, and can also help predict poor survival in patients,' said li, a
researcher.
Although the researchers better understood the key factors driving tissue death, they were not sure why it was beneficial to tumor progression; then they studied data sets in patients with glioblastoma and found that dead cells were able to secrete special molecular signals to help tumor cells grow.
The researchers note that more in-depth studies will be conducted later to analyze how white blood cells that stimulate tissue death reach the tumor, and they speculate that tissue damage from tumor growth may induce neutral granulocytes to reach tumor tissue, but further research is needed to confirm this.
will continue to explore ways to understand how cell necrotasia promotes cancer growth.
if they can develop a new treatment to curb cell death, it may be possible to make tumors less invasive, which may help better treat glioblastoma patients.
() Original source: Patricia P. Yee, Yiju Wei, Soo-Yeon Kim, et al. Neutrophil-induced ferroptosis promotes tumor necrosis in glioblastoma progression, Nature Communications (2020). DOI:10.1038/s41467-020-19193-y。