A team of researchers from the Universities of North Carolina and Duke (USA) and the University of Oxford (UK) have found that reducing the amount of copper in the body can help slow the growth of some types of tumors , like melanoma.
For the study, the scientists used genetically modified laboratory mice with a mutation that included the BRAF gene , a gene that makes the B-RAF protein, which is involved in sending signals in and growing cells. The gene can become activated and mutated in many types of cancer , such as lung cancer. The same mice were also genetically modified to lack a protein that transports copper in cells.
The researchers wanted to see if lowering copper levels could improve survival. The results could not be more encouraging: reducing the level of copper in the genetically modified mice caused a decrease in the growth of cancer cells . In fact, the mice survived 15% longer than mice with a normal level of copper in their body. In the same way, the mice that were administered a drug to control copper levels also managed to reduce the growth of cancer cells.
The conclusions of the work, published in the journal Nature , show that drugs designed to reduce the amount of copper in the body (such as to treat Wilson’s disease) could be able to reduce the growth of tumors that have a mutation in the gene BRAF. However, this treatment would also have negative consequences , since copper deficiency causes, among other things, anemia and also a greater vulnerability to infections.
