Beer yeast cell adaptation may lead to new cancer treatment options, research flags

Researchers suggest that an adaptation that helps yeast cells to go dormant when nutrients are scarce may lead to new strategies to make cancer cells more vulnerable to starvation and, thus, easier to treat. The “never-before-seen” adaptation allows yeast cells to hibernate during stress, which mirrors cancer’s ability to survive nutrient shortages accompanying cancer cells’ unchecked growth.

“Cells can take a break when things get tough by going into deep sleep to stay alive, then at a later point they seemingly just come back,” details co-author Ahmad Jomaa, Ph.D., researcher at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, US. 

“That’s why we need to understand the basics of adaptation to starvation and how these cells become dormant to stay alive and avoid death.”

The yeast species Schizosaccharomyces pombe has been used to brew beer for centuries. Its similarity to human cells makes it an invaluable research tool, helping scientists better understand fundamental cellular processes in healthy and cancerous cells. 

Hibernation mode

The study, published in Nature, details that when yeast cells’ batteries or mitochondria hibernate to avoid stress. They wrap themselves in a blanket of deactivated ribosomes — a structure that makes proteins in cells. However, scientists have yet to understand why these inactive ribosomes detach themselves from the mitochondria. 

Co-author Simone Mattei, Ph.D., of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Germany, says there could be various explanations. “A starved cell will eventually start digesting itself, so the ribosomes might coat the mitochondria to protect them. They might also attach to trigger a signaling cascade inside the mitochondria.” 

The team visualized how the ribosomes attach to the mitochondria down to the molecular level using single-particle cryo-electron microscopy and cryo-electron tomography technologies. The ribosomes attached themselves “upside down” through a small subunit of their anatomy. 

The researchers note that this interaction “had never been seen before” and could help determine how cells enter and wake up from dormancy. 

“We knew that cells would try to save energy and shut down their ribosomes, but we were not expecting them to attach in an up-side state on the mitochondria,” adds Maciej Gluc, co-first author of a new scientific paper detailing the discovery.The researchers note that the study’s outcomes may have research implications to improve cancer cell detection. 

Cancer treatment implications

The study’s findings may have important implications for cancer research. Cancer cells face nutrient shortages constantly due to their unchecked growth, and they often fall into dormancy or quiescence, which is necessary to survive and escape detection by the body’s immune system. The team highlights that understanding how cells do this could lead to new ways of targeting them to improve patient outcomes. 

“For the next steps, we aim to understand how cells regulate entry into dormancy and how they awaken from this deep sleep. We will use yeast for now because it is much easier to manipulate. We are also investigating this in cultured cancer cells, which is not easy,” explains Jomaa. 

“Ultimately, I hope my group’s research will lay the foundation for discovering new markers to track dormant cancer cells. These cells are not easily detected in diagnostic settings, but we are hopeful that our research will generate more interest in helping us reach our goal.”

The authors note that further research is needed to determine if recruiting hibernating ribosomes to mitochondrial membranes is driven by environmental cues that induce cellular stress and if this mechanism also occurs in mammalian systems. 

In other cancer research news, Japanese scientists discovered that food antigens trigger the intestinal immune system to stop new tumors from forming, which could have implications for cancer treatment. These substances that cause the body to make an immune response activate immune cells in the small intestines. 

Another study suggests that a long-chain fatty acid found in meat and dairy enhances immune cell function and anti-tumor immunity, implying that the nutrient can complement cancer treatment.