Obesity—NOT a Trieval Issue

Obesity, according to some, may merely impair one's physical appearance. Being overweight or obese, unbeknownst to them, always places a strain on the physical system. Obese patients, for example, are at a larger risk of developing cardiovascular and metabolic disorders than the general population.

Furthermore, a lot of research has suggested that obesity is an accomplice to cancer. A new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has added support to this conclusion, discovering that obesity may cause previously dormant tumors to reactivate, create blood vessels, and grow anew, becoming more aggressive.

The researchers created a particular set of obese mouse models that went through menopause and so entered the body with less aggressive breast tumors. They next inserted luciferase-labeled breast cancer cells into the fat pads of the experimental mice's mammary glands. Except for their smaller body size, the mice in the control group were identical.

To verify whether the tumors had new angiogenesis, the researchers additionally injected luciferin into the blood of the mice, and when it came in contact with luciferase in the tumor cells, it emitted fluorescence that could be used for them to observe the vascular changes in the tumors in a more visual way.

According to their findings, there was no light in the area where the tumors were transplanted in both groups of mice at first, but approximately 3-6 weeks later, the obese mice began to act less differently, and the brightness of their mammary fat pads progressively rose. At week 12, the tumors in the lean mice were remained mostly latent.

This appears to imply that fat mice have helpers in their bodies that cause tumor development. The researchers first concentrated on the mice's adipocytes, and their investigation revealed that the adipocytes of obese mice generated more angiogenesis-promoting chemicals, such as vascular endothelial growth factor, lipid transport protein 2, and fibroblast growth factor.

Obese mice's fat cells normally accumulate too much fat, and as the cells get larger, they are more likely to experience apoptosis induced by hypoxia, which not only causes cell death but also inflammation. "This chain of events finally causes adipocytes to release more angiogenic factors in order to deliver oxygen via more blood vessels. However, if there are tumors in the environment, they can also profit from this advantage, since inflammatory and pro-angiogenic chemicals in the microenvironment are a favorite of cancer cells", according to Dr. Marsha A. Moses, one of the study's leaders.

The researchers administered drugs that inhibited blood vessel growth to obese mice drugs, and as a result, the mice's tumors remained dormant for significantly longer, and the team also found in several mouse models that such inhibitors could keep tumors inactive in breast cancer.

Researchers now want to apply the results not only to treatment, but also to help more people predict the onset of cancer. They are, for example, attempting to screen obese or overweight women for the risk of breast cancer using urine indicators, the majority of which are connected with blood vessel creation and expansion.

Once these indicators have been demonstrated to be exceeding, they can be addressed with a variety of inhibitors to lower the chance of cancer formation or to maintain tumors as inactive as feasible. Another research is being conducted by the team to examine changes in these critical biomarkers before and after women lose weight and to confirm the viability of the prediction approach.