The Hallmarks of Cancer
Bulletpoints:
- Cancer development is a complex process and the “hallmarks of cancer” help us understand specific changes in normal cells that must occur for cancer to develop.
- Diet and lifestyle choices can help our bodies prevail against cancer for each hallmark are provided.
The Hallmarks of Cancer
Cancer development is a complex process, and the so-called “hallmarks of cancer” were developed as a useful framework to understand and categorize the kinds of changes that must occur in normal cells for cancer to develop. So, the hallmarks of cancer are not specific symptoms that all patients experience. Rather, the hallmarks describe the biological processes that are exploited or hijacked by cancer to form and grow.
Hallmark 5: Replicative Immortality
In cases where cells are damaged but do not need to be killed, the body can also stimulate them to undergo senescence, which is when the cell replication cycle is permanently halted. These cells will eventually die by other means without passing down their mutations through replication.
Cancer cells develop mechanisms that allow it to avoid senescence triggers, which leads to unregulated cell growth and significant damage to the body. This state is termed replicative immortality.
One benefit of targeting replicative immortality in cancer treatments is that it can sometimes take lower doses of medication to induce senescence than it would to kill cells outright. This can result in treatments with less severe side effects.
Curcumin, Green tea, quercetin, Reishi mushroom, milk thistle, Astragalus membranaceus and Panax notoginseng have been shown to facilitate a normal cellular response to senescence.
Hallmark 6: Dysregulated Metabolism
The word metabolism refers to the sum of all chemical reactions that occur inside of an organism or a cell to sustain life. Healthy cells need to have a well-regulated metabolism to make sure they are getting enough energy and producing the compounds they need.
Metabolic processes are a carefully balanced system - disrupting this delicate balance can cause negative effects on the health of the cell and the body.
Glucose is an essential nutrient and is our body’s main source of energy. Energy production is most efficient when oxygen is present (aerobic metabolism) but can still occur, for a limited time, without oxygen (anaerobic metabolism).
Though inefficient, cancer cells are able to utilize multiple alternative energy pathways to survive, allowing the cancer cells to adapt to difficult environments such as hypoxia (low oxygen) and support their accelerated growth.
In fact, cancer metabolism is so complex, Pavlova and Thompson have determined that there are 6 categories of cancer metabolic alterations that cancer cells use to accelerate growth and progression!
Cancer cell energy production is much lower than a normal cells, but cancer cells can consume more than 20 times more glucose compared to normal cells in order to compensate for their less efficient energy production. This phenomenon was originally noted by Dr. Otto Warburg, known as a Warburg effect.
In fact, it is this principle of excess glucose use that is exploited for PET scans ([18F]fluoro-deoxyglucose positron emission tomography) used to detect cancer. Patients are given “tagged glucose” through the IV that can be detected on the scan where it is being used by cancer calls. Since cancer cells metabolize glucose faster and differently than normal cells, the cancer cells “light up” on the scan.
Research shows that poorly regulated metabolism can lead to oncogenesis, or the growth of cancerous cells. Cancer cells need to hijack and modify normal metabolic pathways in cells to continue to grow uncontrollably.
Resveratrol and milk thistle have shown to support a healthy cellular metabolism.
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