New Delhi: A team of researchers in Norway found that cancer patients, particularly young children, have elevated levels of certain auto-antibodies that interfere with the body’s DNA repair mechanism.
The findings were published in Frontiers on 14 October by researchers in Norway who were trying to better understand paediatric cancer. They found that these unusual antibodies would eventually attack the hundreds of little proteins in charge of identifying and correcting errors in the genome.
“We showed that many children with various types of cancer have antibodies against some of their own DNA repair proteins. We also demonstrated that such ‘auto-antibodies’ can enter live cells and bind to – and probably inhibit – the activity of these essential proteins,” corresponding author Ola Myklebost, professor of molecular oncology at the University of Bergen, said in a statement.
According to the scientists, this discovery could lead to the early screening of young children to identify those who might have the chance of developing cancer later.
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Paediatric cancer
Paediatric cancer is not the same as cancer among adults. These cancers, leukaemia (blood cancer), myeloma (plasma cancer), neuroblastoma (cancer of immature nerve cells) and osteosarcoma (bone cancer) differ from “adult cancers” in their cause, location, type, and even response to treatments. While adults have had time to accumulate cancerous DNA, paediatric cancers carry fewer mutations and stem from less developed cells.
For the study, researchers analysed blood samples from 175 adults and children with sarcoma or acute lymphoblastic leukemia. These samples were collected between 2014 and 2017 by Norwegian cancer researchers. They compared these blood samples to those of healthy anonymous children participating in growth studies in Norway.
The results showed elevated levels of the IgC class antibodies which target RAD52, NUMA1, ALKBH7, APBB1, UNG, and MGMT, all key genes closely involved in DNA repair. When researchers looked at blood samples from 59 children who had taken part in an earlier long-term study, they found that half the children with these elevated antibodies had developed cancer before the age of 30.
“Although this cohort is small, it was the best we could find internationally. Even so, we were able to show that indeed, children who later got cancer (on average six years after blood sampling) were about eight times more likely than their healthy peers to have antibodies to at least one core antigen involved in DNA repair,” Myklebost said.
According to the study, when these antibodies enter a cell or its nucleus, they could inhibit the proteins that repair DNA and weaken the cell, leading to cancer.
“At present we are investigating the effect of patient antibodies on the repair of induced mutations in cultured cells. Ultimately, we hope to clone white blood cells that secrete such auto-antibodies, and test for any cancer-causing effects in mice to definitively prove our hypothesis,” Myklebost added.