When cells are better off dead:
Dr. Kirill Rosen explores cancer-causing cell-survival mechanisms
Cell death is a normal and healthy process that allows our tissues and organs to renew themselves. It’s when cells don’t die as they should that we can end up with cancer.
As Dr. Kirill Rosen explains, most common cancers arise from the layer of cells that lines each of our organs. The layer is known as the epithelium; individual cells composing this layer are called epithelial cells. “When normal epithelial cells let go of the lining, they cannot survive on their own,” he says.
However, genetic mutations allow some epithelial cells to survive after detaching from the epithelium. Dr. Rosen and his research team have found that this acquired ability to survive is an essential part of the process that allows these cells to form tumours.
“Now we are studying the mechanisms that allow some epithelial cells to survive outside their original location… there are many proteins and many processes involved,” notes Dr. Rosen, an associate professor at Dalhousie Medical School and research scientist at the IWK Health Centre in Halifax. “Our ultimate objective is to find ways of preventing these mutated epithelial cells from surviving.” Such a discovery would be a breakthrough in the fight against cancer.
Since joining Dalhousie and the IWK from the University of Toronto and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in 2002, Dr. Rosen has been awarded more than $1.3 million to develop his research program. This support has come from the IWK, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the National Cancer Institute of Canada, the Cancer Research Society and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.