The latest discovery: you are asleep, cancer wakes up

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), breast cancer is one of the most common cancers, and about 2.3 million people in the world suffer from this disease each year. If a doctor detects breast cancer early, patients usually respond well to the treatment. However, if the cancer has metastasized -when circulating cancer cells break away from the primitive tumor, through the blood vessels through the body and form a new tumor in other organs, the condition will become bad.

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So far, cancer research has not paid too much attention to when the tumor falls off to metastatic cells. Researchers have previously assumed that the tumor will continue to release such cells. However, a new study carried out by researchers at the Federal Institute of Technology, the University of Basel, and the University of Basel, Switzerland, came to a surprising conclusion: later formation of metastatic circulatory cancer cells, mainly in the influential individuals. Sleep stages. The results of this study have just been published in the Journal of Nature.

Nichola Esto, a professor of molecular oncology and research leader of the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, concluded that "when the affected people fall asleep, the tumor will wake up." In their research, including 30 female cancer patients and mice models, researchers found that the tumor produced more cycle cells when the organism was sleeping. Compared with cyclic cells that leave the tumor during the day, the cells that leave the tumor at night are divided faster, so the possibility of metastasis is more likely.

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The main author of the study, the post -doctoral researcher of the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, said: "The escape of circulatory cancer cells from the primitive tumor is controlled by melatonin, and melatonin determines our rhythm of day and night."

The study also shows that the time to collect tumors or blood samples for diagnosis may affect the discovery of oncist. Researchers were surprised to find that the level of circulating cancer cells in samples collected at different times of the day was very different. Compared with humans, the number of cancer cells found in the blood per unit of mice is much amazing. The reason is that as a nightling animal, mice sleep in the daytime, and this is the time for scientists to collect most of the samples.

In the next step, the researchers will understand how to incorporate these discoveries and optimize existing cancer therapy, and investigate whether different types of cancer are similar to the performance of breast cancer, and if the patient is treated at different times, the existing therapy will be more successful.

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