Till date cancer is one of the most dreaded diseases in the world, being the second leading cause of death as per WHO. Since the 1900s, chemotherapy is the most often used drug treatment to destroy the cancer cells. It mainly uses synthetic anti-tumor agents to prevent the cancer cells from growing and dividing. However, due to extensive use of chemical agents in this treatment, it does have a lot of side effects, some of them being hair loss, anaemia and several other infections.
What if we could use a natural polysaccharide with significant anti-cancer activity as a substitute for synthetic anti-tumor agents?
Early in 2016, a research group led by Prof. Sun Chaomin at the Institute of Oceanology of Chinese Academy of Sciences obtained an active polysaccharide EPS11 from the fermentation broth of Bacillus sp. 11 that displayed dual anti-tumor activities of inhibiting cancer growth and metastasis. However, the underlying target protein and molecular mechanism of anti-tumor metastasis induced by EPS11 were unclear.
Recently, the same research group reported that the exopolysaccharide called EPS11, produced by deep sea bacterium Bacillus sp. 11 can inhibit migration and invasion of liver cancer cells by directly targeting collagen 1.
Using gene over-expression, functional blocking technology and a combination of proteomic analysis, cellular thermal assays and surface plasmon resonance, they further revealed that EPS11 inhibited tumor metastasis by directly having a pharmacological effect on collagen 1 activity via the Beta-1-integrin-mediated signaling pathway.
This study presents a novel mechanism underlying the anti-tumor metastasis of polysaccharides medicine and provides a theoretical basis for developing more carbohydrate-based drugs.
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Blog by: Harshita Patil
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