The incidence rate of Cancer (new cases) increases with age, according to medicine. If the number of cases per 100,000 people is calculated: up to the age of 20, there are less than 25 cases; between 45 and 49 years old, there are around 350 cases; from the age of 60, there are more than 1000 cases.
But that statistics provided, for example, by the National Cancer Institute of the United States has an exception: After age 80 the risk decreases.
Although the risk is documented to increase between ages 60 and 70, an international team of scientists proved that this situation changes in people over 80 years of age.
At work published in the magazine Natureresearchers analyzed lung cancer in mice and tracked the behavior of alveolar stem cells type 2 (AT2). These cells are crucial for lung regeneration and are also the origin of many lung cancers.
There they observed higher levels of a protein called NUPR1 in older mice. This made cells act as if they are iron deficientwhich in turn limited their regeneration rates, restricting both healthy growth and cancerous tumors.
“Aged cells actually have more iron, but for reasons we still don’t fully understand, they function as if they don’t have enough,” explained the oncology biologist. Xueqian Zhuang, from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) in New York.
“Aged cells lose their capacity for renewal and, therefore, the uncontrolled growth that occurs in cancer,” he added. one of those responsible for the work that discovered that the same processes also occurred in human cells: a higher concentration of NUPR1 caused a decrease in the amount of iron available to the cells.
When the concentration of NUPR1 was artificially reduced or the amount of iron was artificially increased, the cell growth capacity increased again.
And they completed: “We discovered that aging drives functional iron insufficiency that leads to loss of pluripotency and tumorigenesis, but promotes resistance to ferroptosis. “These findings have implications for therapeutic modulation of cellular iron homeostasis in regenerative medicine and cancer prevention.”
This could give researchers a way to explore treatments that target iron metabolism, especially in older people, such as restoring lung capacity in those who experience long-term effects of COVID-19.
We found that aging drives functional iron insufficiency leading to loss of pluripotency and tumorigenesis, but promotes resistance to ferroptosis. These findings have implications for therapeutic modulation of cellular iron homeostasis in regenerative medicine and cancer prevention.
Experts say that The findings are consistent with a model according to which most human cancers begin at an early age, which highlights the importance of directing cancer prevention efforts toward young individuals.
This discovery also has implications for cancer treatments based on a type of cell death called ferroptosis, which is triggered by iron. The researchers found that this cell death is less common in older cells due to their functional iron deficiency.
“What our data suggests in terms of cancer prevention is that events that occur when we are young are probably much more dangerous than events that occur later,” says oncology biologist Tuomas Tammela, share MSK.
“So preventing young people from smoking, tanning, or exposure to other types of obvious carcinogens is probably even more important than we thought,” he added.
There is much more to explore here about the effects of NUPR1 and how it relates to stem cell functionboth healthy regeneration and cancerous growth, but these are important findings for fighting cancer at any stage of life.
The doctors responsible stated that when it comes to cancer treatments, multiple factors must be taken into account: the type and stage of the cancer, other medical conditions that may be involved and (as this new study demonstrates) the age of the individual. “The more personalized we can make these treatments, the more effective they can be,” they described.
“There is still a lot that is unknown about how aging actually changes cancer biology,” Zhuang added.
