Researchers Find The Alcohol - Cancer Link

Researchers at Rush University Medical Center report having identified a cellular pathway that may now explain the link. Some 1.4 million Americans were diagnosed with cancer in 2008 according to the American Association for Critical Illness Insurance. The total cost of cancer in the United States is estimated at over $200 Billion.

The scientists found that alcohol stimulates a bodily process in which run-of-the-mill cancer cells morph into a more aggressive form and begin to spread throughout the body. Examining the process, called the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, revealed that alcohol turns on certain signals inside a cell that are involved in this critical transition.

The epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition is a hot area of research right now, implicated in the process whereby cancer cells become metastatic. A large body of laboratory and clinical research suggests that it plays a key role in making cancer cells aggressive.

Medical experts explain that cancer cells become dangerous when they metastasize. They note that surgery can remove a cancerous tumor, but aggressive tumor cells invade tissues throughout the body and take over. "If we can thwart this transition, we can limit cancer's toll," one of the lead researchers explained.

The researchers treated colon and breast cancer cell lines with alcohol and then looked for the biochemical hallmarks of the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, including evidence of a transcription factor called Snail and of the receptor for epidermal growth factor. Snail controls the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition; when overexpressed in mice, it induces the formation of multiple tumors.

Laboratory tests showed that alcohol activated both these and other biochemicals characteristic of the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition. Tests also demonstrated that the alcohol-treated cells had lost their tight junctions with adjacent cells, a preparation for migrating, as metastatic cells do.

The findings were published in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

Written by Mindy Hartman
Los Angeles, CA
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