Cancer cells need healthy genes to survive

BOSTON, May 28 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they've discovered cancer cells rely on normal, healthy genes as much as they rely on mutated genes to maintain their abnormal state.

Researchers at the Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital said they reduced the production of thousands of normal proteins to determine which were required for cancer cells to survive. They found cancer cells growing in a dish rely heavily on many normal proteins and when some of those protein levels drop, cancer cells die.

The researchers said their study also revealed some limitations of the Cancer Genome Atlas, a federally funded effort to sequence cancer genomes. If scientists focus exclusively on DNA sequences, they'll miss key aspects of cancer cell biology, including the reliance on normal proteins, the researchers said.

Professor Stephen Elledge said the findings might lead to a drug cocktail approach in treating tumors.

"We might be able to tinker with the levels of these proteins and cripple cancer cells without hurting normal cells in the body, though this needs to be tested in tumor models," he said.

The study that included researchers Ji Luo, Michael Emanuele, Danan Li, Chad Creighton, Michael Schlabach, Thomas Westbrook and Kwok-Kin Wong appears in the journal Cell.