Cancer is the abnormal and uncontrollable growth of cells. Researchers from the University of Rochester’s Center for RNA Biology have identified a new way to potentially slow the fast-growing cells that cause different cancer.
Cancer grows when cell cycle gone wrong, all cells undergo “cell cycle,” a series of events that culminate in orderly cell growth and division. When cancer grow, cells divide without stopping and destroy tissues.
Researchers identified a protein called Tudor-SN that is important in the “preparatory” phase of the cell cycle — the period when the cell gets ready to divide. When scientists eliminated this protein from cells, using the gene editing technology CRISPR-Cas9, cells took longer to gear up for division.
The loss of Tudor-SN slowed the cell cycle. Tudor-SN is plenty in cancer cells than healthy cells, and our study suggests that targeting this protein could hinder fast-growing cancer cells.
The cell now moves more slowly from the preparatory phase to the cell division phase.