Sunday, July 29, 2018

An Elegant and Monumental Experiment


The year is 1952 – two years prior to the discovery of the three-dimensional structure of DNA.  At that time there were essentially two schools of thought regarding the class of organic compounds responsible for heredity, namely, proteins or nucleic acids.  Two researchers Alfred Hershey (1908 – 1997) and his assistant Martha Chase (1923 – 2003) collaborated on a research project that they felt could unambiguously provide the answer to this fundamental question.  The experiment described below is remarkably simple, precise and elegant; the ramifications of their results speaks for itself in regards to the discoveries that would follow including Watson and Crick’s elucidation of the structure DNA and ultimately the complete sequence of the human genome (2003).

Hershey and Chase focused their attention upon the bacteriophage – a type of virus that preferentially attacks bacterial cells.  Like all viruses, the phage is made up of two distinct classes of compounds – a protein coat that surrounds a DNA core (there is also a class of viruses that use RNA as the infecting agent, the AIDS virus, for example).



Their experimental approach involved two precise steps outlined below
  •          They labeled the phage (T2) with radioactive Phosphorus (P32) prior to introducing T2 to bacterial host.  Phosphorus is predominantly found in DNA where it is a major constituent and found in protein in insignificant amounts.  After infection, they found that P32 was no longer in the phage, but was found in the host indicating the phage DNA was transferred to the host. 
  •          In the second experiment, they preferentially labeled the phage protein with radioactive Sulfur (S35).  Sulfur is a significant part of the composition of proteins but does not exist in nucleic acids (DNA).  In their analysis subsequent to infection, they found that S35 remained with the phage but was not found in the bacterium.



The results from these experiments, clearly demonstrated that the infectious agent was DNA and not protein.  This conclusion was so significant at the time that James Watson stated that, “the Hershey-Chase experiment had a much broader impact than most confirmatory announcements and made me ever more certain that finding the three-dimensional structure of DNA was biology's next important objective.

Note, that Hershey won the Nobel Prize for his work in 1969 along with Max Delbruck and Salvador Luria.  This kind of experimental approach also demonstrates the roles that imagination, dedication, persistence and creativity play in conducting scientific research. 

Saturday, July 7, 2018

A Rationale for the High Mortality Rate of Pancreatic Cancer


Pancreatic cancer is an especially aggressive cancer with a high mortality rate – only 6% of those affected survive beyond 5 years.  It is also the fourth most common death from cancer worldwide.  Even under conditions when it was supposedly caught early on, the adenocarcinoma was successfully resected and the liver was deemed to be free of the presence of metastatic legions, patients, nonetheless suffered from subsequent metastatic disease.  The obvious conclusion from this observation is that there are latent metastases that persist and that are only detectable microscopically.
 
Furthermore, these latent metastases were believed to represent a balance between cancer cell growth and cancer cell death precipitated by the participation of the immune system in countering this growth.  More recent evidence has indicated, however, that quiescent single disseminated cancer cells (DCCs) are involved.  An explanation for this quiescence has been elusive: although involvement of the immune system is suspected.  Of course, the question remains that if the immune system is involved why is it not able to eliminate these DCCs entirely.
Douglas T. Fearon and his colleagues from the John Hopkins University School of Medicine studied the role of adaptive immunity in response to DCCs using the mouse model.  Both mice and humans with pancreatic duct adenocarcinoma (PDA) show DCCs resident in liver.  in both cases, these cells display unusual phenotypic characteristics – negative for cytokeratin (CK) 19 and major histocompatibility complex class I (MHCI).

According to the authors, “The absence of MHCI and the occurrence of specific CD8+ T cells in the genetically engineered mouse model of PDA, and possible in patients with PDA, suggested that DCCs may be selected by an anticancer immune response during the metastatic process.” This rationale is represented by the image below.



The lack of the expression of MHCI in DCCs is indicative of Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) stress.  ER stress occurs within cells in certain pathological conditions when there is an accumulation of unfolded proteins.  Many proteins vital to cell viability are maintained in precise folded configurations.  If the mechanism responsible for maintaining proteins in the folded state is disrupted, this results in so-called ER stress.  In this model, quiescent DCCs lacking the expression of MHCI elude destruction by the CD8+ T cells.  These surviving DCCs can then grow out into full blown metastases if the immune response is subsequently disrupted.  In other words, it is the immune response that selects for quiescent DCCs.  To test this hypothesis, the investigators used a mouse model that would allow them to introduce immunogenic PDA cells into seeded mice livers that were pre-immunized and contained only quiescent DCCs lacking MHC1 and CK19.  Those recipients that were not pre-immunized developed macro-metastases.   As a result, a subpopulation of PDA with the phenotypic characteristics of DCCs were found in vitro and those cells proved to be the precursors of DCCs in vivo.

The authors of this study conclude that, “A PDA-specific adaptive immune response selects DCCs, in which the ER stress response accounts for both quiescence and resistance to immune elimination. Accordingly, outgrowth of DCCs to macro-metastases requires not only relief from the cancer cell–autonomous ER stress response, but also suppression of systemic immunity. Thus, the ER stress response is a cell-autonomous reaction that enables DCCs to escape immunity and establish latent metastases.”

This finding may prove important in developing more effect therapeutic strategies for combating pancreatic cancer that currently has an unacceptably high mortality rate.