SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Dec. 6 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Research Unit of the Nuestra Señora de Candelaria University Hospital, a center attached to the Ministry of Health, carries out biomedical research that studies the changes in the structure of cells after the use of antitumor chemotherapy treatments. The project, which receives funds from the State Research Agency, will study the morphological changes of cells in cancer patients.
The researchers found that one of the groups of agents used in chemotherapy, called microtubule inhibitors, respond by blocking the stage of cell division. They waited for the levels of this harmful compound to drop and proceeded to repair the damage. This procedure is related to the process known as autophagy, by which cells eat the parts of themselves that contain toxic components.
The analysis of the results, obtained in laboratory cell models exposed to chemotherapeutic agents, made it possible to discover that the cells intimately associated the autophagic organelle with the nucleus, which could have implications for the development of new and better antitumor treatments.
The objective of the project will be to delve into these changes in cell models, in addition to studying why this modification occurs in the nucleus and whether these characteristics exist in the tumor cells extracted from the biopsies of cancer patients, and whether they serve to predict tumor evolution and responses to chemotherapy.
